The relationship between hardiness, stress and burnout has been established in occupational settings (Kelley, 1994; Talarico, 1989; Topf, 1989). This relationship has not been established with athletic populations, however. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between personality hardiness, perceived stress and burnout in a selected sample of collegiate athletes. Participants were 181 male (n=129) and female (n_=52) Division I athletes from three Midwestern universities representing four sports (baseball, softball, tennis and track). Each subject was asked to complete a survey - consisting of the Third Generation Hardiness Test, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory - during the regular season and at least 24 hours prior to an athletic contest. It was hypothesized that hardier athletes would report lower levels of perceived stress and burnout, and that higher levels of stress would be related to higher levels of burnout. Pearson product-moment correlations supported the hypothesized relationships. / School of Physical Education

Due to medical advances, there has been an increased number of burn survivors, thus creating a dire need for research on burn recovery. As 70% of burn-injured patients are male, it is especially important to examine how men understand healing from a burn injury. One way to explore this is by investigating men’s stories of healing because it is through and by the experiential space of narrative that individuals are provided with the tools to reflect on and find meaning from their experiences of burn injuries. This thesis examined narratives men constructed about healing from a burn injury. Adult men with 0.5 – 30% total body surface area burned were recruited for an in-depth semi-structured interview, two to fifty-two weeks post-injury. Narrative analysis of the transcripts revealed that men principally constructed a dominant narrative that involved wanting to return to a life that was “normal” as soon as possible. I argue that these stories are indicative of a restitution storyline, that is, they follow a plotline in which the men view themselves as being temporarily injured but soon recovered. I then explore how agency, or more specifically, how agentic behaviours facilitate these narratives about men returning to their pre-injury selves. Men also constructed narratives about boredom, grief and regrets at the same time as the restitution narratives. These narratives indicated distress because they were counter to the stories that the men wanted to construct. The discussion contextualizes the men’s restitution narratives in terms of masculine socialization, and considers the role of agency in informing narrative plotlines. Lastly, recommendations to health care providers who treat men that have survived a burn injury are provided.

Bakteriologinis nudegimo žaizdų tyrimas svarbus nustatant esamus potencialius patogenus, padeda diagnozuoti infekciją, leidžia įvertinti sepsio tikimybę, nustatyti tinkamą laiką žaizdos audinių rekonstrukcijai. Tačiau iki dabar tęsiasi diskusijos, kuris mėginio paėmimo metodas yra optimalus žaizdos mikroflorai arba infekcijai nustatyti. Lietuvoje toks tyrimas iki šiol nebuvo atliktas, o kitų šalių mokslininkų skelbiami rezultatai gana prieštaringi. Atlikto darbo metu tyrėme, kuris bakteriologinio tyrimo metodas (kiekybinis bei pusiau kiekybinis tepinėliai ar biopsija) yra kliniškai vertingiausias žaizdos mikrofloros stebėjimui ligos periodu, infekcijos patvirtinimui atsižvelgiant į klinikinius žaizdos pokyčius. Vienodas bakterijų rūšis tose pačiose žaizdose dažniausiai nustatė biopsija ir pusiau kiekybinis tepinėlis. Šių metodų bendras rezultatų sutapimas buvo labai geras. Abiem metodais nustatomo bakterijų kiekio koreliacija – vidutinė. Tačiau geriausiai rezultatai sutapo žaizdoje esant nedideliam bakterijų kiekiui. Esant klinikiniams žaizdos infekcijos požymiams reikšmingai dažniau bakterijos ir didesnis jų rūšių kiekis nustatytas biopsijos tiriamojoje medžiagoje. Biopsijos metodu reikšmingai dažniau nustatytas labai gausus (>105 KFV) bakterijų kiekis. Nudegimo žaizdų užteršimui bakterijomis stebėti, kai nėra infekcijos požymių, pusiau kiekybinis tepinėlio metodas yra tinkamiausias. Kliniškai nustatytą žaizdos infekciją geriausiai atspindi biopsijos tyrimo rezultatai. / Evaluation of microorganisms in burn wound is important not only in determining potential pathogens present, but also allows diagnosing an infection, evaluating possibility of sepsis, and determining the appropriate time for wound tissue reconstruction. However, there are still many discussions about the optimal wound sample taking method to determine wound microflora or infection, and the opinions about sample taking methods for identification of microorganisms are controversial. We have compared three methods (quantitative swab, semi-quantitative swab, biopsy) and determined significant differences. Similar species of bacteria in the same wounds were most frequently identified by biopsy and the semi-quantitative swab method. The general concordance of the results of these methods was very good. There was a medium correlation of the bacterial amount identified by these methods. However, there was the best concordance of the results in presence of a small amount of bacteria in a wound.In presence of clinical wound infection signs, bacteria and larger number of their species were significantly more frequently identified in the biopsy material. The biopsy method significantly more frequently identified a very large amount (>105 CFU) of bacteria. The semi-quantitative swab method is most appropriate to monitor burn wound contamination with bacteria when there are no infection signs. A clinically determined wound infection was best reflected by the results of biopsy.

Forest managers throughout Canada must contend with natural disturbance processes that vary over both time and space when developing and implementing forest management plans designed to provide a range of economic, ecological, and social values. In this thesis, I develop a stochastic simulation model with an embedded linear programming (LP) model and use it to evaluate strategies for reducing uncertainty due to forest fires. My results showed that frequent re-planning was sufficient to reduce variability in harvest volume when the burn fraction was low, however, as the burn fraction increased above 0.45%, the best strategy to reduce variability in harvest volume was to account for fire explicitly in the planning process using Model III. A risk analysis tool was also developed to demonstrate a method for managers to improve decision making under uncertainty. The impact of fire on mature and old forest areas was examined and showed that LP forest management planning models reduce the areas of mature and old forest to the minimum required area and fire further reduces the seral area. As the burn fraction increased, the likelihood of the mature and old forest areas satisfying the minimum area requirements decreased. However, if the seral area constraint was strengthened (i.e., the right hand side of the constraint was increased) the likelihood improved. When the planning model was modified to maximize mature and old forest areas, the two fixed harvest volumes (i.e., 2.0 and 8.0 M. m3/decade) had much different impacts on the areas of mature and old forest when the burn fraction was greater than 0.45%. Bootstrapped burn fraction confidence intervals were used to examine the impact of uncertain burn fraction estimates when using Model III to develop harvest schedules. I found that harvest volume bounds were large when the burn fraction was ≥0.45%. I also examined how the uncertainty in natural burn fraction (i.e., estimates of pre-fire suppression average annual area burned) estimates being used for ecosystem management can impact old forest area requirements and the resulting timber supply.

There is a critical need for more studies to identify socio-ecological drivers that affect conservation and management of fire adapted ecosystems, yet studies that identify such variables and explore their interaction in specific systems are not only scarce but limited to only a few systems. Although information on the socio-ecological effects of prescribed fire application exists, there is no integrative framework that simultaneously considers the interplay between social and ecological factors affecting the use of prescribed fires. Fire suppression, together with other human and natural disturbances in grassland systems that are adapted to episodic fire, are the major factors that have contributed to the recruitment of woody species into grasslands worldwide. Even though the ecology of restoring these fire prone systems back to a grassland state is becoming clearer, the major hurdle to reintroducing historic fire at a landscape scale is its social acceptability. To address these deficiencies, I studied the socio-ecological factors influencing the use of prescribed fire in Texas, USA and Chihuahua, Mexico using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine how social and ecological factors affect ecosystem conservation and management of semi-arid grassland systems. For the Texas case study I used quantitative survey data analyzed using logistic regression models and structural equation models. For the Mexico case study I used qualitative interviews gathered using a snowball network sampling approach and coded them based on the analytic themes of land cover change, institutional failure, market drivers, and population dynamics. Results from the Texas case study suggest that risk taking orientation and especially, perceived support from others when implementing prescribed burns, play important roles in determining attitudes towards the use of high-intensity prescribed fires, which are sometimes needed to restore ecosystems. Results from the Texas case study also highlight how membership in Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) influence land manager decisions regarding the use of prescribed fire by reducing concerns over lack of skills, knowledge and resources. Results emphasize the potential for PBAs to reduce risk concerns regarding the application of prescribed fire and are relevant to management of brush encroached areas. Through PBAs, effective landscape-scale solutions to the brush encroachment problem can be achieved in Texas. Results from the Mexico case study show how fire stopped effectively being a driving factor on this system decades ago. Socio-political and ecological changes at the national, and international level produced changes in land use disrupting historical fire patterns and contributing to the ecological deterioration of the area. Droughts combined with poor management practices have depleted the fuel needed to carry a fire. Landowners also face safety and legal concerns but in most cases, even if a landowner decided to implement a prescribed burn, an ecological threshold has been crossed and current fine fuel loads (grass) are insufficient to carry a fire that is sufficiently intense to reduce brush cover and restore grassland and savanna ecosystems. Based on my findings I can conclude that ecologically sound adaptive management and social capital are fundamental components of the livelihoods of landowners and land managers in both case studies. Work and investment that is focused on strengthening this social capital will have the most profound effects in maintaining the integrity of grassland systems at a landscape scale.

The exotic Pinus plantations of southeast Queensland occupy approximately 130 000 ha and are prominent in catchments which drain to estuarine and marine waters that are economically, socially, and environmentally important. Recently, the deterioration of estuarine and marine water quality has raised concerns about the possible off-site impacts from the intensive management of the Pinus estate in southeast Queensland. Additionally, forest managers have raised questions over the effects of the currently adopted management practices on soil, water, and nutrient resources within plantations. A paucity of information regarding the impacts of these plantations in the humid sub-tropics of southeast Queensland initiated the research presented here. The objectives of this study were to: (i) determine the influence specific Pinus management techniques (harvesting, site-preparation, prescribed burning and forest roads) have on runoff generation; (ii) quantify fluxes of some nutrients (nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and iron (Fe)) and suspended solids (SS) in runoff from these management treatments; and, (iii) assess the overall effectiveness of the currently adopted Best Management Practices (BMP's) in protecting on-site soil, water and nutrient resources, as well as protecting off-site waters from pollution. The study site was located in an intensively managed sub-catchment within the Beerburrum State Forest Pinus plantation on the coastal plain of the Pumicestone region, southeast Queensland. This study was established in October 2001 and consisted of a 141 ha catchment based investigation into water quality and hydrology, which received a 50 ha harvest treatment in February and March 2002. Water was monitored for two water years (October 2001 - September 2003), and incorporated site-preparation and the establishment of the subsequent rotation. The influence of a forest road stream crossing was also monitored in this component of the investigation. Two discrete forest road plots were monitored for the same period to measure the response of runoff, nutrient and sediment fluxes to different road surface materials (gravelled and ungravelled), road maintenance and traffic intensity. Rainfall simulation was used on small plots covering specific management treatments (clearfall harvest, cultivation, fertilised cultivation, prescribed fire and established trees) within the general plantation area to determine their influence on water, sediment and nutrient fluxes. The investigation in the catchment receiving inter-rotation management revealed that that there was very little difference in water quality indices up and downstream of the forest road stream crossing, which suggests that road borne runoff contributed only minor amounts of N, P, Fe and SS to the stream. Perched groundwater quality within the general plantation area was similar to that observed in the adjacent stream. Water quality monitoring within the Coochin-Mellum and Coonowrin Creek catchments showed that the mean annual concentrations of N and P in surface waters were highest from catchments hosting agriculture and residential areas, respectively. Mean annual DOC and Fe concentrations were highest from the catchment hosting native Wallum vegetation. The mean annual concentration of SS was highest from an unmanaged native forest catchment. The rainfall simulation on specific management treatments revealed that mean losses of N and P from unfertilised and unburnt treatments were comparable to loads reported from catchment scale studies in the Pinus plantations of south-east Queensland. Mean SS loads from all treatments were considerably higher than stream loads reported in the literature from catchment scale investigations, and suggest that the currently adopted mitigation practices between the general plantation area and streams are effective in promoting the deposition of entrained solids. The investigation into gravelled and ungravelled forest roads revealed that the mean runoff coefficient (runoff depth / rainfall depth) was consistently higher from the gravelled road plot with 0.57, as compared to the ungravelled road with 0.38. Total sediment loss over the two year period was greatest from the gravelled road plot. Suspended solids contributed 86% of the total sediment loss from the gravelled road and 72% from the ungravelled road over the two years. When road and drain maintenance (grading) was performed runoff and sediment loss was increased from both road types. It should be noted that the results presented herein were based on only two water years, and both years experienced below average rainfall. As such it is important that future research in a catchment prone to waterlogging be conducted over a longer term so as to increase the chance of quantifying water, nutrient and sediment fluxes in response to average and above average rainfall years. It is likely that in above average rainfall years the results for nutrient and sediment fluxes from the general plantation area would be significantly different as runoff would be more readily generated and sustained for longer periods. Overall, the research presented suggests that the management of an exotic Pinus plantation during the inter-rotation period results in relatively low fluxes of N, P, SS Fe and DOC in stream water and vindicates the use of the current practices in protecting on-site water, soil and nutrient resources.

This thesis examined the utility of Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2002) as a framework for understanding athlete burnout and its hypothesized opposite - athlete engagement. Athlete burnout was defined as "a psychological syndrome of emotional/physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation" (Raedeke, 1997, p.398). Athlete engagement was defined as a persistent, positive, cognitive-affective experience in sport that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and confidence. Based on the predictions of Vallerand�s (1997; Vallerand & Losier, 1999) motivational model, it was hypothesized that elite New Zealand athletes with higher perceptions of competence, autonomy, and relatedness (i.e., basic psychological needs) would also report more self-determined motives to participate in sport and that individuals with higher self-determined motivation would experience lower athlete burnout and higher athlete engagement. Before testing these hypotheses four preliminary studies were necessary. First, because of the nomadic lifestyles of many elite athletes, it was decided that an online survey delivered via the Internet would be the most appropriate and effective method for collecting data to test the central hypotheses. However, a literature search revealed that no studies in sport psychology had compared online and traditional paper and pencil survey methods and therefore a preliminary study was needed to investigate potential survey format effects. Results of measurement invariance and latent mean structures analyses indicated that there were no differences on the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire for randomly assigned online (n=117) and paper and pencil (n=97) groups. Second, recent research (e.g., Martens & Webber, 2002; Riemer, Fink, & Fitzgerald, 2002) has indicated that the only published measure of behavioural regulations (i.e., motives) in sport (Pelletier, Fortier, Vallerand, Tuson, & Blais, 1995) has psychometric problems. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a reliable and valid measure of behavioural regulations in sport. Following rigorous scale development procedures that included expert review and pilot testing, results from two studies (n=382 and n=343) supported the reliability and validity of this new measure - the Behavioural Regulations in Sport Questionnaire. Third, while researchers in organizational and educational psychology have examined engagement experiences, no research has investigated athlete engagement. Results of a qualitative inquiry with elite New Zealand athletes (n=15) indicated that vigour, dedication, and confidence were core athlete engagement dimensions. Fourth, items for a quantitative athlete engagement questionnaire were created using operational definitions from the qualitative study and then reviewed by athlete burnout and positive psychology experts. Analysis of data from two samples (n=382 and n=343) supported the reliability and validity of the Athlete Engagement Questionnaire. Results from the final study (n=343) investigating the relationships amongst basic needs, behavioural regulations, burnout, and engagement generally supported the main hypotheses of the thesis. Indeed, athletes with higher perceptions of autonomy and competence reported more self-determined regulations; however, relatedness was not a significant predictor. Athletes� levels of self-determined motivation accounted for substantial portions of variance in athlete burnout symptoms: emotional/physical exhaustion (R�=.13), sport devaluation (R�=.43) and reduced accomplishment (R�=.42). Behavioural regulations were also strong predictors of athlete engagement, accounting for 49% of the variance in vigour, 42% of the variance in dedication, and 30% of the variance in confidence. Implications of these results for researchers and practitioners are discussed. Directions for research concerning SDT, athlete burnout, and athlete engagement are also highlighted.

This research shows that sense of community reduces the effect of job stress on burnout among a sample of 672 New Zealand nurses. Sense of community - a feeling that members matter to one another (and to the group) and a shared faith that members� needs will be met through their commitment to be together - consists of four elements: membership, integration and fulfilment of needs, influence and shared emotional connection. Results indicate that nurses have a moderate to high level of sense of community. Apart from the influence element, subscale reliabilities for the other three elements were acceptably high on the Nurse Sense of Community Index, an instrument that was developed for use in this study. In relation to occupational stress, the study results indicate that high workload, rather than any difference in the practice requirements of various types of nursing work is the most important factor contributing to nurses� job stress. Public hospital nurses experience significantly higher levels of perceived job stress than their private sector counterparts because high workloads and problems of recruiting and retaining nurses are more typical of the public sector. Nurses who work full-time experience more job stress than those who work part-time, and those in the 20 to 30 age group experience the highest frequency of perceived job stress. Burnout is a syndrome of high emotional exhaustion and high depersonalisation in the presence of a lack of personal accomplishment. Nurses who work full-time experience significantly higher levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation than those who work part-time. Accident and emergency nurses have the highest level of burnout and intensive care unit nurses the lowest level of burnout among public hospital nurses. Overall, the majority of nurses experience a low to moderate degree of burnout. Yet, a substantial proposition of the sample population acknowledge experiencing some aspect of burnout, and as has been found by other nursing studies, a nurse�s age influences burnout levels, with younger nurses experiencing more burnout than older nurses. A clear relationship between an increased frequency of perceived job stress and burnout was identified. Results suggest that nurses with a high level of sense of community have lower frequencies of perceived job stress, experience lower burnout than those with low and moderate levels of sense of community. Findings demonstrate that burnout remains a serious issue for nurses the nursing profession and, as the demands on professional workers increase, the health care sector. The theoretical and practical implications of the study�s findings for management practice are postulated in the conclusion of this thesis.

Ignition and combustion enhancement of lean homogeneous mixtures offers the potential to simultaneously lower pollutant emissions and improve the thermal efficiency of internal combustion engines. A single cylinder, high compression ratio (16.5:1), open chamber diesel engine has been converted to operate on homogenously charged compressed natural gas (CNG) with the aim of minimising pollutant emissions such as oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter and carbon dioxide. Three ignition systems were tested to examine how effectively they could ignite lean mixtures of CNG with the ultimate aim of achieving simultaneously high thermal efficiency and low oxides of nitrogen emissions. The ignition systems examined were spark ignition (SI), diesel pilot ignition (DPI) and hydrogen assisted jet ignition (HAJI). Irrespective of ignition system used, the efficiency of the engine operating on CNG was significantly reduced at part load compared to diesel. This was predominantly due to a greater amount of unburnt hydrocarbons, higher cycle-by-cycle variability, slow and partial burns and increased heat transfer to the walls. DPI and HAJI systems were able to extend the lean limit to lambda 2.7 and 3.3 respectively, however this did not result in efficiency gains over SI systems. HAJI proved to be superior to DPI with higher peak efficiency, lower carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulates, and significantly lower oxides of nitrogen in the absence of a locally rich ignition source. (For complete abstract open document)

There are many public health organizations with guidelines concerning the best first-aid treatment for burn injuries. The Australian and New Zealand Burn Association recommends that a burn wound should be cooled with tap water (8-20°C) for 20 minutes, up to three hours after the injury has occurred. However, the evidence that these guidelines are based on is inconclusive and contradictory. As a result of the conflicting published data, there is controversy over whether ice water or ice may confer any beneficial wound healing effects, and what temperature of water is optimal. In the wider community there are also many different alternative therapies believed to be beneficial for the treatment of burn injuries which do not have much evidence to support their use. In this study, patients were found to use agents such as Aloe vera, tea tree oil dressings, butter, toothpaste, papaya ointment and moisturizer on the burn wound. The aim of this work was to review the current field of first-aid treatment for burn injuries and obtain evidence for the optimum first aid treatment using a good animal model, with clinically relevant assessments of wound healing and scar formation. The mechanisms behind the best first aid treatment were also investigated in an effort to better understand and identify the factors involved in optimal wound healing. Studies showed that cool running water at 15°C and 2°C improved the speed of wound healing, gave a better cosmetic outcome and decreased amounts of scar tissue compared to untreated controls. Other treatments Aloe vera, tea tree oil dressings, ice and saliva did not improve wound healing compared to untreated controls. All cold treatments acted to decrease the subdermal temperature, however as the running water was beneficial for wound healing whereas the ice was not, this suggests that the running water acts through other non-thermal mechanisms. Further studies showed that immediate treatment with 15°C water for 20 minutes duration significantly improved the re-epithelialization for 2 weeks post-burn and decreased the distribution of scar tissue compared to untreated controls, however durations as short as 10 minutes and delays of treatment for 1 hour (and perhaps longer) were also beneficial. An audit of first aid used by pediatric patients demonstrated that although 86.1% of patients used first aid, only 12.1% applied the recommended first aid treatment of cold water for 20 or more minutes. For those that did use correct first aid, re-epithelialization time and number of hospital visits were significantly reduced for children with contact and flame burns, respectively. Inadequate first aid treatment was also found to be more common for children <3.5 years old and for friction burn injuries. These studies provide compelling evidence that correct first aid treatment of burn injuries results in improved clinical outcomes, which benefit the patient as well as health care providers. There is a definite need for greater public awareness concerning the correct first aid treatment to use for burn injuries.