Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: B, page: 6315. Adviser: John W. Erdman, Jr. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-152) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

The health care system in Saudi Arabia has faced a variety of problems affecting its services, especially in the management area, for example in coordination, duplication of services, authority and leadership. These problems have resulted in patients having difficulty accessing services, in long waiting lists, in medical malpractice and in dissatisfaction among patients and employees. At fault appears to be the organisational culture in the Saudi public sector. To understand this culture and to be able to change it in a positive way, this study applies the Competing Values Framework (CVF) to health care providers in Saudi Arabia. Since this application goes beyond the original Western context of the CVF, it is important to analyse the national culture of Saudi Arabia. Using a critical application of Hofstede’s framework, it was characterised by high power distance, collectivism, femininity and risk aversion. The organisational culture of the health service and its hospitals reflects these societal characteristics. Application of the CVF revealed a balance between the four types of organisational culture in the Saudi health care provision, in both the current and preferred situations. The findings also revealed that a hierarchy culture had slight prevalence when compared to other types in the current situation, while clan culture was slightly more prevalent in the preferred situation. To improve Saudi health care provision, a balance and a uniform strengthening of the four types of cultures (clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy) is required. The findings of the research will be of use across Arab countries in a variety of public service settings. In addition, this research makes a considerable addition to a rather sparse stock of empirical studies in the management of culture in the Arab Gulf states.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: B, page: 2789. Adviser: Schuyler S. Korban. Includes bibliographical references. Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Culture health of Ceriodaphnia dubia was evaluated for organisms cultured using all combinations of three foods and three waters. Criteria used to assess health of cultures included adult and neonate weights, time required to produce first broods, neonate production, adult survival, and resistance to hexavalent chromium. Diet/water combinations which produced the most neonates were not found to produce adults which were more resistant to chromium than those which produced fewer neonates. Of those evaluated, a diet of Selenastrum capricornutum and a yeast-trout chow-cereal leaf mixture was best for culturing and testing Ceriodaphnia. The best synthetic water tested was a mixture of nine parts reconstituted hard water and one part bottled mineral water.

Popular discourses and current government policy focus on the need for individuals and families to make healthy food choices, without acknowledging the social and cultural milieu in which these are embedded. A neo-liberal focus on responsible individualism is part of a middle class habitus that ensures foodwork and foodplay are located within distinct heteronormative cultural fields. In my thesis I explore narratives from seventy-five mainly middle class respondents who engaged in a series of asynchronous online interviews over nine months beginning in November 2010. The themes that emerged aligned with public policy debates on the family, healthy eating, eating disorders, ‘fat’ bodies and elite foodways. Hence, feeding the family ‘healthy’ meals ‘prepared from scratch’ was considered a means of acquiring social, symbolic and cultural capital. ‘Fat’ talk and ‘lipoliteracy’ or learning to read the body were ways of performing femininity, whilst elite foodways were utilised as forms of hegemonic masculinities. Hence, in a challenge to the individualisation thesis my research demonstrates the complexity of food relationships beyond individual consumer choice. Throughout I adopt an auto/biographical approach that stresses the interconnectedness of biography and autobiography, focuses on researcher reflexivity and is sensitive to respondent subjectivities. Respondents used a common vocabulary of individuality, whilst simultaneously embedding themselves in family and kinship relations. Indeed, family, gender, and class, were the means of anchorage in a sea of remembering that engendered a sense of ontological security. Foodways are, thus, part of a habitus that is gendered, classed, temporal and historical. Women in the study conformed to cultural scripts of heteronormative femininity, whilst men resorted to hegemonic masculinities to distance themselves from feminised foodways and care work. These identities were not part of a negotiated family model, but located in cultural fields that reinforced and naturalised gendered divisions, they were bound by gender and class.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from title page of source document (viewed May 25, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

The effect of parasitism on the individual, and on a population, is one of the least understood and poorly studied areas of fish ecology. Parasites compete for maternal energetic reserves required for the production of viable eggs and offspring; thus parasites can directly influence population dynamics by lowering the number of offspring that survive to produce. The goal of this work was to explore the effect of parasitism on the reproductive potential of fish. Traditional measures of somatic energy reserves and body condition were examined along with newer measures of fatty acids present in eggs to approximate reproductive potential. Eighty female common snook, Centropomus undecimalis, were collected during spawning season (mid April to mid October) from four spawning aggregations along the southeastern coast of Florida and examined for a suite of biological, reproductive, and parasite infection measures. General linear models were used to model somatic indices, body condition, fatty acid composition and the ratios of fatty acids in eggs as a function of parasite infection parameters, host age, capture location, capture month and year. All fish were included in the somatic indices and body condition analysis while a subset of 40 fish were used in the analysis on fatty acid composition and the ratios of fatty acids in eggs. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis (D.P.H.)--University of Michigan.

Thesis (D.P.H.)--University of Michigan.