This study aims to understand how professional development impacts employee engagement, more specifically, career development for nurses working in the hospital or home healthcare setting. There is a shortage of nurses in the United States, and turnover rates are high. Nurses are a critical part of the healthcare staff and, to survive and thrive, healthcare organizations need to retain nurses. Engagement is a broad term used to describe an individual's relationship with their work. It is interwoven with other constructs of organizational behavior, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, burnout, resiliency, and motivation. This study considers all those constructs and measures engagement in the context of motivation, positive feelings towards one's employer, and intention to remain with the organization. Like engagement, development is an expansive term, and this study explores nurse preferences for development and focuses specifically on the impact of career development. Key findings include the illumination of factors impacting career decisions and development, the interconnectedness of career development and motivation, and the positive impact of career development.--Author's abstract

National and international research on governmental privatization efforts reflects myriad successes and failures. However, little is known about the effectiveness of family safety privatization efforts in the state of Florida. In Brevard County, Florida, family safety privatization efforts have been underway for several years now, and while evaluations are taking place, they do not reflect one key piece of information—the perceptions of family safety workers. A snowball sample was obtained from former and current child safety workers and open- and closed-ended questions were administered with a total of 15 former and current family safety workers who work or worked for several different public and private family safety agencies within Brevard County, Florida. Information was obtained regarding perceptions of privatization to adequately and more efficiently do the work of public entities. The results show two primary areas of interest. The model of care which has been instituted post-privatization (CARES) has been perceived as more effective than the former state model; the strongest problematic themes that developed concerned power, control, and the perception of unfairness. These themes are explored using a backwards mapping approach and recommendations for continued growth and cohesion are explored.

During the past decades, the world has seen a fast development in information technology. This has led to significant changes in many different industries including the media industry. The transformation is in progress and is unceasingly changing the game rules for media companies. Many magazines are struggling in the new competitive media landscape since existing business models in the print industry are hard to apply to the digital industry. In order for magazines to remain competitive they need to develop their revenue models and adjust to the new game rules in the industry. This thesis is focused on how magazines could develop their businesses in order to remain competitive in the transition from print to digital media. The research methods used were semi-structured interviews and a survey. The interviews were conducted with seven different media experts in order to find possible directions for Swedish magazines in general. The survey was aimed exclusively to the entertainment magazine Nöjesguiden in order to decide what additional revenue models fit them best. The results from the interviews implicate that magazines should continuously evaluate their print business using a holistic perspective, adopt long-term perspectives, initiate cost cutting in the print business and put the cost savings into investments for the future. In addition, they should have four main areas of focus in the digital business – strategy, content, target group and data. Strategy relates to focusing on the digital business, being innovative and trying new things. The results also show that it is beneficial to separate the old business from the new since the old business is linked to outdated industry structures. Regarding content, the direction should be either very broad or very niched. Thereto, magazines should focus on unique content, which refers to content that is not available elsewhere by other content providers. In addition, magazines should evaluate what makes their content unique. This is closely related to the target group, which is going to become more important in the future media climate. For magazines, getting to know their specific target group and focusing on improving the brand recognition are going to be advantageous factors in being competitive in the digital media climate. In conclusion, magazines should use data to continuously evaluate their business and use that knowledge to improve their offer. The results from the survey shows that the best new revenue model for Nöjesguiden at the moment is events.

Safety-critical software systems have traditionally been found in the aerospace-, nuclear- andmedical domains. As technology advances and software complexity increases, such systemscan be found in more and more applications, e.g. self driving cars. These systems need to meetexceptionally strict standards in terms of dependability. Proving compliance is a challenge forthe industry. The regulatory bodies often require a certain amount of testing to be performed butdo not require evidence of a given failure rate (which for software is hard to deal with comparedto hardware). This Licentiate thesis discusses how to quantify test results and analyses whatconclusions can be drawn from a given test effort, in terms of remaining faults in the software.

No description available.

The following research examined the overall biological profile of an anatomized human skeletal assemblage discovered in Winchester, Massachusetts (Middlesex County) in 2020. This assemblage was discovered during construction of a private house in a suburban neighborhood. In addition, this project examined the history of medical teaching specimens and how this new collection connected to the anthropological understanding of this history. For centuries, marginalized individuals, including Black people, poor people, and criminals, were utilized as the cadaver supply for medical schools. The author examined the general biological profile, including sex, age, population affinity, and stature, of the Winchester assemblage. Since none of the fragmented postcranial bones were able to be matched to particular individuals, these estimations served as a profile for the general population of the Winchester assemblage. The skulls were the only parts of the sample that could be treated as specific individuals. Craniofacial nonmetric traits were observed as well as postcranial aspects of the skeleton. The total number (NISP) of adult remains was 14,469. The MNI of the adult remains was 35 based on the left femora. The author hypothesized that the majority of the remains would consist of male individuals, and the age profile would reflect the average age at death during the mid-1800s, which was about 20-40 years old. In addition, it was hypothesized that the majority of individuals would be of Black population affinity, which might indicate that the remains were robbed from Black cemeteries. The majority of the assemblage was indeed comprised of males. Specifically, 60.5% of the pubic symphyses and 58.8% of the greater sciatic notches analyzed were determined to be male. The general average age at death of the sample was 23 to 45 years old. Estimation of population affinity of the sample was attempted; however, the results were not compelling due to the fragmentation of the remains and limited ability to reconstruct crania. The stature of the remains was estimated to range from 58.1 to 69.9 inches or 4 feet 10 inches to 5 feet 10 inches. This biological profile was compared to the demographics of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and the United States presented by the 1850 U.S. Census and data from the military during that time. The Winchester adult remains had more males than females, similar to the sex representation in Massachusetts’ poorhouses, penitentiaries, jails, and houses of correction during 1850. Unlike these institutions, the general population of Middlesex County had more females than males. The 1850 Census indicates that the majority of individuals in Massachusetts’ poorhouses, penitentiaries, jails, and houses of correction were 24 years and older, which aligns with the estimated aged range for the Winchester adult remains. White and Black individuals were the only population affinities compared in the 1850 Census, and there were significantly more White individuals. The average height of a White male in the US military was 63.7 inches, which aligned with the general stature interval of 58.1 to 69.9 inches for the adult Winchester remains. Future research, including DNA and isotope analyses, could provide further insights into the origins of these individuals discovered at this site.

Remaining useful life (RUL) predictions are a key enabler to achieving efficient maintenance in the context of Industry 4.0. Data-driven approaches, in particular employing deep neural networks (DNNs), have shown success in the RUL prediction task. However, although their architecture considerably affects performance, DNNs are usually handcrafted by human experts via a labor-intensive design process. To overcome this issue, we propose evolutionary neural architecture search (NAS) techniques that explore a search space using a genetic algorithm (GA). NAS automatically discovers the optimal architectures of neural networks for RUL predictions. Our GA allows an efficient search, finding high-quality solutions based on performance predictions which reduce the needed computational efforts for network training. In particular, first, we apply evolutionary computation to find the best architectures of deep and complex neural networks in terms of prediction accuracy. On the other side, we consider multi-objective optimization (MOO) of rather simple and fast neural networks to search for the best network architectures in terms of the trade-off between RUL prediction error and the number of trainable parameters, the latter being correlated with computational effort. In our experiments, we evaluate the performance of the found solutions on widely-used benchmark datasets, CMAPSS and N-CMAPSS. In comparison with the state-of-the-art, the obtained networks by our single objective NAS approach outperform other handcrafted recent DNNs in terms of prediction error, and the automatically designed networks by the multi-objective NAS approach provide comparable results with manually designed traditional DNNs in terms of the test RMSE, but the number of trainable parameters is considerably smaller and the training time is significantly shorter. Our results demonstrate that the neural networks whose architecture is optimized by evolutionary NAS techniques can be a useful tool to solve the RUL prediction task.

No description available.

The present research examines the pathological changes and taphonomic alterations of buried human skeletal remains discovered in a burial feature underneath a construction site in a neighborhood house in Winchester, Massachusetts. Artifact association places the burial of these remains around the mid 1800s. Pathological changes were observed based on the presence of bone formation or destruction. The manifestations of pathological change observed for were related to or consistent with joint disease, infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, congenital abnormalities, dental disease, and neoplastic conditions. Taphonomic profiles of buried remains display certain characteristics that can be used to make comparisons to other known burial types, specifically traditional cemetery burials. The characteristics observed for to create the taphonomic profile were soil and mineral staining, bone condition and preservation, plant adherence and/or damage, postmortem damage, and the presence of coffin artifacts. The author hypothesized that the current sample of human skeletal remains from the Winchester Site would display pathological changes consistent with individuals from marginalized populations of the nineteenth century. The most prevalent pathological changes in the sample were those related to osteoarthritis (OA) and infection. The vertebral elements were most affected by OA, at 24.0% on the vertebral bodies and 17.5% on the vertebral facets. Of the remaining elements scored for OA, only 7.1% showed characteristics. Infection was observable on 10.9% of the postcranial elements, with the fibulae being the most affected, at 20.9%, followed by the tibiae at 18.3% and the clavicles at 16.1%. There were more cases of sclerotic bone, which indicated that the healing process started prior to death. There were only 11 cases of antemortem trauma that were observed to be either in the process of healing or already healed, as well as 2 cases of healed amputations of two proximal row pedal phalanges. Dentition was most affected by calculus at 33.3%, and had little instances of linear enamel hypoplasias. Other miscellaneous pathological changes were also observed, including Schmorl’s nodes, PH/CO, HFI, possible neoplasms, possible tuberculosis, and exostoses of the mouth. It was also hypothesized that the skeletal remains would display a different taphonomic profile compared to previously researched profiles of anatomized and cemetery remains. There is ubiquitous soil staining throughout the sample, postmortem damage at 69.4%, moderate cortical erosion at 15.7%, slight plant root adherence at 8.3%, and low mineral staining at 5.3%. There is a lack of anatomical hardware present throughout the remains, which indicates that the remains were not used for anatomical teaching. There is an abnormal pink stain on 1.0% of the skeletal remains, possibly the result of a historical embalming technique that used mercury. The analysis of the skeletal remains from the Winchester Site supported the hypothesis that the remains would display pathological changes consistent with marginalized populations. The author compared the Winchester Site to sites that reported having anatomized remains of marginalized individuals, specifically sites that were used as medical waste sites, poorhouses, and almshouses. The analysis of the skeletal remains also supported the hypothesis that the remains would display a taphonomic profile more consistent with cemetery remains buried directly in the soil and secondarily determined that the site was likely used as a medical waste site of anatomized remains. The analysis of the Winchester Site also confirmed that the remains did not display a taphonomic profile related to coffin cemetery remains or remains that have been prepared and used for anatomical teaching.

This thesis focuses on obtaining better estimates of remaining life for on-condition (OC) parts in aircraft engines. Aircraft engine components are commonly classified into three categories, life-limited parts (LLP), OC-parts and consumables. Engine maintenance typi-cally accounts for 10% to 20% of aircraft-related operating cost. Current methods to esti-mate remaining life for OC parts have been found insufficient and this thesis aims to devel-op a method that obtains better life estimates of OC part. Improved life estimates are es-sential to facilitate more reliable maintenance plans and lower maintenance costs. In the thesis, OC parts that need a better life estimates are identified and suitable prognosis methodologies for estimating the remaining life are presented. Three papers are appended to the thesis. The first paper lays out the main principles of air-craft engine maintenance and identifies the potential for improving maintenance planning by improving the remaining life estimation for the OC parts. The paper concludes that re-search is needed to find better estimates so that the right amount of maintenance is per-formed at each maintenance occasion. The second paper describes the aircraft and its engine from a system of system perspective. The aim of the paper is to show that no system is stronger than its weakest part and that there is a potential to increase the availability and readiness of the complete system, the aircraft engine, by introducing better life estimates for OC parts. Furthermore, a review of all engine parts, no matter if they are life-limited or on-condition, which needs to be incor-porated in a replacement model for maintenance optimization, is given. The paper con-cludes that the reliability of the complete aircraft engine would be increased if better life estimates are presented also for the OC parts. The third paper includes an evolved analysis of the subject and the analysis moves deeper in to a subsystem/module of the engine, the low pressure turbine. The specific subsys-tem/module is further analyzed to show the potential of increased reliability for the subsys-tem/module and the complete system, the aircraft engine, if better life estimates for the OC parts are obtained. Methods on how to estimate remaining life is discussed in this paper. It is stated that life estimates can be based on visual inspections, available testing methods (e.g. non destructive testing ) or new techniques that may be need to be developed based on remaining useful life estimations. To estimate the remaining life for the OC parts well es-tablished prognostic techniques such as physic-based, data-driven, symbolic, hybrid, or context awareness approaches that combine contextual/situation information awareness will be considered.