This study investigates women’s possibilities to actively participate in societal change in Egypt. It aims at enhancing the understanding of structural conditions for women’s agency and how these enables and/or restrains women’s participation in the aspiration for societal change as well as their aspiration to live a ‘full life’. Egypt was chosen as a field for studying women’s understanding of their opportunities of participation and empowerment before and during the revolution. The informants in the study are all consciously working for awareness and equality in society. Formal education in Egypt is criticized and the country suffers from a high illiteracy rate, making informal education an important way to attain knowledge that can assist women in their quest for societal change. The acknowledgment of participation as a human right is one of the issues women are fighting for in Egypt today. A specific interest in this study is what motivates some women to oppose social, cultural and political structures despite the often high personal cost, and how informal (educational) channels are being used in the quest for societal change. The theoretical construction in which the analysis is carried out is based on frictions between societal structures and agency, using the Capability Approach (Sen, 1999) which aims at understanding what agency women have in societal change. The concept of functionings is used to indicate what someone is able to do and be. By analyzing women’s valued functionings, their conditions and thus their sense of empowerment and their experienced opportunity costs emerge. Central to the analytically framed societal structures and how agency can be perceived within each structure are the social conversion factors, the norms that allow or hinder action. To frame the complexity of women’s conditions for active agency and the outcome of their actions, I use a theoretical framework that will comprise both goals and processes. Sen’s (1999) ideas on social choice along with Archer’s (1995) theory on social change, using her model of structural elaboration / reproduction, have proved useful when investigating women’s valued functionings and attained social changes. The results of the study show that when formal education is not adequate, knowledge is obtained outside the formal educational institutions. This is done through both non-formal and informal learning. However, to get access to informal learning, a number of valued functions have to be gained. These functionings are thus both conditions for change and an end in themselves. I try to show that the costs involved in transgressing the prevailing norms are high, but lack of hope, agency and empowerment are also experienced as a high cost for those who have, in fact, imagined another better life and are in opposition to the inhibitory societal structures. This is, however, a part of what motivates some women to continue to be involved in societal change in order to achieve a life they have reason to value.

<p>Patient dose in diagnostic radiology is usually expressed in terms of organ dose and effective dose. The latter is used as a measure of the stochastic risk. Determinations of these doses are obtained by measurements (Thermoluminescent dosemeters) or by calculations (Monte Carlo simulation).</p><p>Conversion factors for the calculation of effective dose from dose-area product (DAP) values are commonly used to determine radiation dose in conventional x-ray imaging to realize radiation risks for different investigations, and for different ages. The exposure can easily be estimated by converting the DAP into an effective dose.</p><p>The aim of this study is to determine the conversion factor in procedures by computing the ratio between effective dose and DAP for fluoroscopic cardiac procedures in adults and for conventional lung and urography examinations in children.</p><p>Thermoluminescent dosemeters (TLD) were placed in an anthropomorphic phantom (Alderson Rando phantom) and child phantom (one year old) in order to measure the organ dose and compute the effective dose. A DAP meter was used to measure dose-area product.</p><p>MC calculations of radiation transport in mathematical anthropomorphic phantoms were used to obtain the effective dose for the same conditions with DAP as input data.</p><p>The deviation between the measured and calculated data was less than 10 %. The conversion factor for cardiac procedures varies between 0.19 mSvGy-1 cm-2 and 0.18 mSvGy-1 cm-2, for TLD respective MC. For paediatric simulation of a one year old phantom the average conversion factor for urography was 1.34 mSvGy-1 cm-2 and 1,48 mSvGy-1cm-2 for TLD respective MC. This conversion factor will decrease to 1.07 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using the TLD method, if the new ICRP (ICRP Publication 103) weighting factors were used to calculate the effective dose.</p><p>For lung investigations, the conversion factor for children was 1.75 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using TLD, while this value was 1.62 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using MC simulation. The conversion value increased to 2.02 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using ICRP’s new recommendation for tissue weighting factors and child phantom.</p>

Patient dose in diagnostic radiology is usually expressed in terms of organ dose and effective dose. The latter is used as a measure of the stochastic risk. Determinations of these doses are obtained by measurements (Thermoluminescent dosemeters) or by calculations (Monte Carlo simulation). Conversion factors for the calculation of effective dose from dose-area product (DAP) values are commonly used to determine radiation dose in conventional x-ray imaging to realize radiation risks for different investigations, and for different ages. The exposure can easily be estimated by converting the DAP into an effective dose. The aim of this study is to determine the conversion factor in procedures by computing the ratio between effective dose and DAP for fluoroscopic cardiac procedures in adults and for conventional lung and urography examinations in children. Thermoluminescent dosemeters (TLD) were placed in an anthropomorphic phantom (Alderson Rando phantom) and child phantom (one year old) in order to measure the organ dose and compute the effective dose. A DAP meter was used to measure dose-area product. MC calculations of radiation transport in mathematical anthropomorphic phantoms were used to obtain the effective dose for the same conditions with DAP as input data. The deviation between the measured and calculated data was less than 10 %. The conversion factor for cardiac procedures varies between 0.19 mSvGy-1 cm-2 and 0.18 mSvGy-1 cm-2, for TLD respective MC. For paediatric simulation of a one year old phantom the average conversion factor for urography was 1.34 mSvGy-1 cm-2 and 1,48 mSvGy-1cm-2 for TLD respective MC. This conversion factor will decrease to 1.07 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using the TLD method, if the new ICRP (ICRP Publication 103) weighting factors were used to calculate the effective dose. For lung investigations, the conversion factor for children was 1.75 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using TLD, while this value was 1.62 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using MC simulation. The conversion value increased to 2.02 mSvGy-1 cm-2 using ICRP’s new recommendation for tissue weighting factors and child phantom.

Fracture systems or networks always control the stability, deformability, fluid and gas storage capacity and permeability, and other mechanical and hydraulic behavior of rock masses. The characterization of fracture systems is of great significance for understanding and analyzing the impact of fractures to rock mass behavior. Fracture trace data have long been used by engineers and geologists to character fracture system. For subsurface fractures, however, boreholes, wells, tunnels and other cylindrical samplings of fractures often provide high quality fracture trace data and have not been sufficiently utilized. The research work presented herein is intended to interpret fracture traces on borehole walls and other cylindrical surfaces by using stereology. The relationships between the three-dimension fracture intensity measure, P32, and the lower dimension fracture intensity measures are studied. The analytical results show that the conversion factor between the three-dimension fracture intensity measure and the two-dimension intensity measure on borehole surface is not dependent on fracture size, shape or circular cylinder radius, but is related to the orientation of the cylinder and the orientation distribution of fractures weight by area. The conversion factor between the two intensity measures is determined to be in the range of [1.0, &#960;/2]. The conversion factors are also discussed when sampling in constant sized or unbounded fractures with orientation of Fisher distribution. At last, the author proposed estimators for mean fracture size (length and width) with borehole/shaft samplings in sedimentary rocks based on a probabilistic model. The estimators and the intensity conversion factors are tested and have got satisfactory results by Monte Carlo simulations. / Ph. D.

Non-monetary deprivation indicators are now widely used for studying and measuring poverty in Europe. However, despite their prevalence, the empirical performance of existing deprivation scales has rarely been examined. This thesis i) identifies possible conceptual problems of existing deprivation scales such as indexing, missing dimensions and threshold; ii) empirically assesses the extent of possible error in measurement related to these conceptual problems; and iii) offer an alternative way for constructing deprivation measures to mitigate the identified conceptual problems. The thesis consists of four stand-alone papers, accompanied by an overarching introduction and conclusion. The first three papers provide empirical evidence on the empirical consequences of the missing dimensions and threshold problems for the measurement and analysis of poverty, while the fourth paper exemplifies a concept-led multidimensional design that can reduce the error introduced by these conceptual problems. The analysis is generally held for 25 EU countries using European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC); only in the second paper, the analysis is done for the UK using British Household Panel Survey (BHPS).