This thesis analyzes how Harold Pinter&rsquo / s characters use language with ulterior motives: making their existence felt and acknowledged, concealing the truth, avoiding conflict or confrontation, and exerting dominance. In the dissertation, stylistics, which is the analysis of texts by means of linguistic phenomena, has been used as the method of analysis. Characters&rsquo / use of language with ulterior motives has been illustrated with reference to a variety of Pinter&rsquo / s plays.

Rural populations are traditionally understudied, especially as it is concerned with the experiences of sexual minority women and the experiences of internalized stigma (negative attitudes towards the self) are often related to poor health outcomes within the LGBTQ+ community (Meyer, 2003). This relationship has been found to be mediated by rumination, suppression, and social isolation, which has been generalized to cognitive, coping, and social mediators (Hatzenbuehler, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Dovidio 2009). The current study examines the indirect effect of internalized stigma on self-rated health and quality of life through cognitive mediators (self-esteem, self-compassion, and feelings of guilt and shame) in sexual minority women located in northeast Tennessee (N=134). Participants completed the following scales: Perceived Self Stigma Scale (Mickelson, 2001), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), Self-Compassion Scale- Short Form (Raes, Pommier, Neff, & Van Gucht, 2011), Personal Feelings Questionnaire (Harder & Zalma, 1990), WHOQOL-BREF (World Health Organization, 1998), and the SF-36v2 (Health Survey, 1996). Results suggested that only self-esteem mediated the relationship between internalized stigma and both self-rated health and quality of life. Analyses were conducted via the data software SPSS. Internalized stigma was found to predict self-esteem (b = -0.153, p =.023). In turn, self-esteem was then predictive of self-rated health (b = .399, p =.043) and quality of life (b = 0.438, p = .007). A mediational analysis was conducted using a PROCESS (Hayes, 2014) macro to test the hypothesis that self-esteem acts as a mediator between internalized stigma and quality of life and self-rated health. There was an indirect effect of internalized stigma on quality of life (effect = -.067, 95% CI (-.157, -.016)) and self-rated health (effect = -.061, 95% CI (-.151, -.013)) through self-esteem. All other regression and mediational analyses with self-compassion, shame, and guilt were nonsignificant. With these findings, clinical therapy may be improved for sexual minority women by focusing on internalized stigma as an underlying cause of lower self-esteem and poor health. If the focus of therapy becomes internalized stigma, based on our findings, reduction of internalized stigma could increase self-esteem and in turn increase self-rated health and quality of life in sexual minority women.

This study aimed to provide insights into the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) people within LGBTQ+ culture, and to explore how they disclose or conceal their sexual identities within different social environments. A qualitative study enabled me to become immersed within the stories of LGBTQ+ people, in order to better understand the construct and importance of LGBTQ+ culture. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups, 14 members of the LGBTQ+ community from around the nation volunteered to share their experiences with LGBTQ+ culture and their negotiation of identity within heterosexual culture. From participants’ stories, key themes were identified: sexual identity and the processes of integrating multiple aspects of identity (i.e., ethnic, religious, gender), characteristics and values within the LGBTQ+ and heterosexual cultures, and how LGBTQ+ people make decisions to conceal or “come out” about their sexual identity depending on the environment. Participants described three levels of identification as LGBTQ+: individual, proximal social group, and a broader LGBTQ+ culture. The narratives converged to reveal a process, contextual navigation, for how LGBTQ+ people conceal or disclose (“come out”) their sexual orientation depending on safety within a given environment. We suggest that people working with LGBTQ+ individuals should encourage engagement in the LGBTQ+ culture, as this may provide support for identity development and facilitate mental health outcomes.

Statue The Lilith is figural sculpture that combines elements of hyperrealism with purely abstract element. Female figure sitting on a throne is wrapped and draped in unrelated elements and their relationships. That make her imaginary clothes. The statue is the result of interest in the topic of mystery and its sculptural representation. The statue is a combination of materials, mostly it consists of fiberglass and polyester.

Rural populations are traditionally understudied, especially as it is concerned with the experiences of sexual minority women. Previous research has found that sexual minorities experience worse health outcomes in comparison to heterosexual individuals, which could be due to minority stress (the unique stressors they face as sexual minorities, such as discrimination and concealment of sexual orientation) (Meyer, 2003). More recent research has found that the relationship between minority stress and health outcomes has been mediated by social variables, like social isolation (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2009). Thus, the current study examined the indirect effects of proximal minority stress of concealment on self-rated health and quality of life through various social factors (community connectedness, social support, indirect support seeking, and belongingness). Participants included 134 sexual minority women in Northeast Tennessee. Participants completed the following measures: the Short Form LIHS (Szynmanski & Chung, 2001); Indirect Social Seeking Scale (Barbee & Cunningham, 1995); the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988); the Belongingness Scale (Malone et al., 2012); the Connectedness to the LGBT Community Scale (Frost & Meyer, 2012); WHOQOL-BREF (World Health Organization, 1998); SF36v2 (Health Survey, 1996). In order to test that belongingness, social support, indirect support seeking, and community connectedness mediated the relationship between concealment to quality of life and self-rated health, a mediational analysis was conducted using PROCESS (Hayes, 2014) macro. Analysis showed that concealment was indirectly linked through belongingness with quality of life and self-related health. Concealment significantly predicted belongingness (b = -.327, p = .021), which in turn significantly predicted self-rated health life (b = .214, p = .004) and quality of life (b = .251, p < .001). A mediational analysis was conducted, and it was found that concealment had an indirect effect on self-rated health through belongingness (effect = -.070, 95% CI = -.1865, -.0105) and indirect effect on quality of life through belongingness (effect = -.066, 95% CI = -.161, -.001). All other mediational analyses were nonsignificant. Our results suggest that cognitive aspects of social life, like perceived belongingness, may be an important mechanism through which minority stress affects health.

Yes / This study explored the perspectives of Black men, originally from East Africa, living in the United Kingdom and their partners on what it means to live with diagnosed HIV. This article reports on concealment of HIVpositive status as a strategy adopted by the affected participants to manage the flow of information about their HIV-positive status. Analysis of the data, collected using in-depth interviews involving 23 participants, found widespread selective concealment of HIV-positive status. However, a few respondents had ‘come out’ publicly about their condition. HIV prevention initiatives should recognise concealment as a vital strategy in managing communication about one’s HIV-positive status.

In these days of international safety measures there is a small probability of outer attack, which would concern the Czech Republic. A greater risk exists from the side of terrorist attacks or natural disasters and catastrophies of a large extent. An integral part of protection of the population in the situation of threat to the state and state of war is especially a matter of concealment of people from undesirable impacts. The method and content of collective protection of people is determined by the plan of concealment, which belongs to the emergency plan of the region, perchance to outer emergency plans for zones of emergency planning as well as municipality plans. The concealment of people at the state of war in the region territory can be provided in permanent and improvized shelters. They serve for the protection of people from the effects of weapons of mass destruction, they are considerably resistant against direct hits of classic explosives as well as percussion bullets. At present no legislative regulation directs municipalities to work out concealment plans. Public awareness of the character of possible threat, prepared rescue and liquidating works and of protection of people is also insufficient. My thesis shows the present situation and the state of concealment plans at municipalities with extended field of activity in the region of South Bohemia. It compares individual means for concealment of people at municipalities with extended field of activity and their state and applicability in the state of emergency or war. At the same time it shows prospective intentions concerning the protection of people in the Czech Republic until 2013.

Video surveillance applications have experienced an increase in demand over the last decade. Surveillance systems can easily be found in places such as commercial offices, banks and traffic intersections, parks and recreational areas. Surveillance applications have the potential to be implemented on a WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) network. Moreover, WiMAX devices have been used widely in the market and WiMAX-based video surveillance products have also been available. As a radio technology, WiMAX is a wireless broadband system that offers greater capacity than WiFi networks and wider coverage than cellular networks. The acceptance of WiMAX in the market, the availability of WiMAX products and its technology excellence, contribute to the possibility of implementing it for surveillance application. However, since WiMAX is designed to accommodate various applications with different quality of service (QoS) requirements, dedicated surveillance network implementation of WiMAX may not achieve optimum performance, as all Subscriber Stations (SSs) generate the same QoS requirements. In the medium access (MAC) layer, this thesis proposes a bandwidth allocation scheme that considers the QoS uniformity of the traffic sources. The proposed bandwidth allocation scheme comprises a simplified bandwidth allocation architecture, a packet-aware bandwidth request mechanism and packet-aware scheduling algorithms. The simplified architecture maximizes resources in the Base Station (BS), deactivates unnecessary services and minimizes the processing delay. The proposed bandwidth request mechanism reduces bandwidth grant and transmission delays. The proposed scheduling algorithms prioritize bandwidth granting access to a request that contains important packet(s). The proposed methods in the MAC layer are designed to be applied to existing devices in the market, without the necessity to change hardware. The transport protocol should be able to deliver video with sufficient quality while maintaining low delay connectivity. The proposed transport layer protocol is therefore designed to improve the existing user datagram protocol (UDP) performance by retransmitting packet loss selectively to increase the received video quality, and utilizing MAC support to achieve low delay connectivity. In order to overcome the limitations of the lower layers, this thesis employs a rateless code instead of transport layer redundancy in the application layer. Moreover, this thesis proposes post-decoding error concealment techniques as the last means to overcome packet loss. To evaluate the performances of the proposed methods, simulations are carried out using NS-2 simulator on Linux platform. The proposed methods are compared to existing works to measure their effectiveness. To facilitate the implementation of the transport layer protocols in practical scenarios, UDP packet modification is applied for each transport layer protocol.

Les questions sur l’existence de l’écriture en Afrique ont toujours intéressé les milieux intellectuels, entre ceux qui pensent que l’écriture sur le continent est un phénomène nouveau, issu de la colonisation et ceux qui le remettent en question. La présente thèse se propose d’analyser la présence de l’écriture dans la société traditionnelle fang et démontrer que toute société a cette volonté d’inscription du sens afin de perpétuer la mémoire collective (rites, croyances et organisation sociale). C’est à travers le masque que cette problématique sera étudiée : le masque comme ce qui permet de lire cette « pensée de l’écriture ». Le second temps de ce travail, abordera le masque dans la littérature, à ses différents niveaux d’appréhension (masque culturel et masque social) sans les considérer comme hétérogènes mais pour en souligner la complémentarité. Puis, voir également comment l’écriture littéraire s’approprie le fonctionnement du masque chez deux auteurs : Ludovic Obiang et Sami Tchak, par la dissimulation ou encore le voile. L’intérêt ici est de reconsidérer la place des motifs traditionnels dans la littérature africaine contemporaine, comme tentative de réponses aux problématiques actuelles. / Questions about the existence of writing in Africa have always interested intellectual circles, between those who think that writing on the continent is a new phenomenon resulting from colonization, and those who challenge it. The present thesis proposes to analyze the presence of the writing in the traditional Fang society, and to demonstrate that every society has that will of inscription of meaning in order to perpetuate the collective memory (rites, beliefs and social organization). It is through the mask that that problematic will be studied: the mask as the means of reading that "thought of writing". The second stage of this work, will deal with the mask in literature, through its different levels of apprehension (cultural mask and social mask) without considering them as heterogeneous, but to emphasize its complementarity. Then, this work will also highlight how the literary writing appropriates the functioning of the mask in two authors: Ludovic Obiang and Sami Tchak, through concealment or veil. The interest here is to reconsider the position of traditional symbols in contemporary African literature, as an attempt to answer to current questions.

<p>Recent algorithms for video coding achieve a high-quality transmission at moderate bit rates. On the other hand, those coders are very sensitive to transmission errors. Many research projects focus on methods to conceal such errors in the decoded video sequence. </p><p>Motion compensated prediction is commonly used in video coding to achieve a high compression ratio. This thesis proposes an algorithm which uses the motion compensated prediction of a given video coder to predict a sequence of several complete frames, based on the last correctly decoded images, during a transmission interruption. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on a video coder which uses a dense motion field for motion compensation. </p><p>A drawback of predicting lost fields is the perceived discontinuity when the decoder switches back from the prediction to a normal mode of operation. Various approaches to reduce this discontinuity are investigated.</p>