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This thesis explored the public relations practitioner's role in the growing field of special events.A review of literature found that no study of this type had been conducted and that there is little instructional information available on the topic.A 29-item survey was mailed to 613 public relations professionals acquired through a systematic random sample of O'Dwyer's Directory of Public Relations Firms, 1983. Three mailings resulted in 153 usable responses.The survey included scaled, multiple choice, and open ended questions. Question topics included: awareness and involvement in special events on a national and agency level; responsibility for conceptualization and implementation of special events; objectives for events; amount of responsibility in events; success of events; quantity, quality, type and specific sources of instructional information; and demographic information.The returned responses were coded and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive data were provided on all responses and crosstabulations were established for selected variables.The majority of the respondents stated that they had seen an increase in the number of events in both their agency and in the United States. In addition they predicted that the trend will continue for both.The majority agreed upon typical objectives for special events, the success of the events and the most effective techniques for measuring the success of the events.The respondents also indicated that there is little instructional information available on special events and that what is available is only average in quality.In conclusion, all of these responses seem to indicate that public relations practitioners perceive special events to be a very positive, growing and successful part of the public relations agency's business. However, there appears to be a need for better educational material on this important aspect of their business.

Class of 2009 Abstract / OBJECTIVES: To determine the likelihood of pharmacists in England of reporting adverse drug reactions (ADR), whether they are aware of the reporting processes, and what they believe the reasons for not reporting may be. METHODS: A survey containing five different scenarios of ADRs was distributed to licensed, community pharmacists around Surrey, England. The responses were analyzed using rates and chi-square. RESULTS: A total of 47 surveys were returned to the researcher. Of those, 72% of the participants were likely to report the adverse drug reaction in the scenarios provided. In addition, 87.5% of the pharmacists were familiar with the reporting procedures in place in the United Kingdom. A total of 51.9% were not able to distinguish between a major and minor adverse reaction. Finally, with a X2 value of 0.070, there was not a significant difference between males and females and the likelihood of reporting these errors (p=0.79). Similarly, there was no significant difference between the likelihood of reporting an event involving a pediatric patient vs. an adult patient with a X2 value of 0.275 (p=0.599). CONCLUSIONS: Most pharmacists were aware of the procedures involved in reporting ADRs in the United Kingdom and were likely to report these ADRs. Additionally, the most common reason predicted for not reporting was due to the lack of time pharmacists have to report these events. Regardless of gender, male and female pharmacists were equally likely to report ADRs.

Resumo: A proposta dessa pesquisa foi apresentar um procedimento metodológico para aplicação de um banco de dados de eventos severos em estudos de problemas geoambientais. Sua eficácia foi avaliada considerando ocorrências de movimentos de massa significativos em 15 municípios paulistas, cobrindo o período de setembro de 2009 a fevereiro de 2010. As características geológicas, geomorfológicas, hidrológicas e de ocupação foram consideradas e confrontadas com as situações de tempo atmosférico que contribuíram para a deflagração dos eventos calamitosos. observou-se que o domínio da Zona de Convergência do Atlântico Sul está associado às ocorrências mais catastróficas, especialmente em locais de relevo de morros, saprólitos ou contatos solo-rocha, no Complexo Cristalino também relacionado à ocupação desordenada. O estudo também aplicou os índices de risco e vulnerabilidade proposto por Marcelino et al. (2006), que apontou maior risco nos municípios com reincidências de escorregamentos e maior vulnerabilidade em locais com alta densidade demográfica, elevado índice de pobreza e grande número de idosos. Dessa maneira, a aplicação do banco de dados de eventos severos para problemas de geotecnia ambiental, mostrou-se uma importante ferramenta na determinação de áreas de risco, podendo assim, servir de suporte logístico para órgãos que trabalham com a assistência aos vitimados / Abstract: The research aimed to present a methodology for implementing a database of severe weather events for geo-environmental evaluations. Its efficiency was assessed by considering significant mass movements occurrences in 15 municipalities of São Paulo state between September 2009 and February 2010. The geological, geomorphological, hydrological, as well as the occupation characteristics of selected areas were compared with the previling weather that contributed to the outbreak of calimitous events. Most of the episodes accurred in hills, saprolits or soil-rock contacts in the Crystalline Complex. The unplanned occupational pattern was also an important contributor to the calamitous occurences. The risk and vulnerability index proposed by Marcelino et al. (2006) was applied and lead to high risk in the municipalities with repeated landslides. The vulnerability was greater in area with high population density, poverty rates end number of elderly people. The study enhanced the importance of a database of calamitous events to evaluate geotechnical problems and proved to be an important tool for determining risk areas. Thus, it may serve as logistical support for agencies that work with the assistance to victims / Orientador: Anna Silvia Palcheco Peixoto / Coorientador: Luci Hidalgo Nunes / Banca: Ana Maria Gomes Held / Banca: George de Paula Bernardes / Mestre

Exponential growth in computer technology, both in terms of individual CPUs and parallel technologies over the past decades has triggered rapid progress in large scale simulations. However, despite these achievements it has become clear that many conventional state-of-the-art techniques are ill-equipped to tackle problems that inherently involve multiple scales in configuration space. Our difficulty is that conventional ("time driven" or "time stepped") techniques update all parts of simulation space (fields, particles) synchronously, i.e. at time intervals assumed to be the same throughout the global computation domain or at best varying on a sub-domain basis (in adaptive mesh refinement algorithms). Using a serial electrostatic model, it was recently shown that discrete event techniques can lead to more than two orders of magnitude speedup compared to the time-stepped approach. In this research, the focus is on the extension of this technique to parallel architectures, using parallel discrete event simulation. Previous research in parallel discrete event simulations of scientific phenomena has been limited This thesis outlines a technique for converting a time-stepped simulation in the scientific domain into an equivalent parallel discrete event model. As a candidate simulation, an electromagnetic hybrid plasma simulation is considered. The experiments and analysis show the trade-offs on performance by varying the following factors: the simulations model characteristics (e.g. lookahead), applications load balancing, and accuracy of simulation results. The experiments are performed on a high performance cluster, using a conservative synchronization mechanism. Initial performance results are encouraging, demonstrating very good parallel speedup for large-scale model configurations containing tens of thousands of cells. Overheads for inter-processor communication remain a challenge for smaller computations.

One of the primary concerns with space travel is the protection of astronauts from potentially lethal radiation. A major source of potentially lethal radiation is our own sun. During Solar Cycle 23 there were 97 detected Solar Particle Events (SPEs). In order to develop radiation protection guidelines and establish methods to protect astronauts the spectrum of particles emitted during a SPE must be understood. Data for oxygen and iron particle fluence was taken from the Solar Isotope Spectrometer. The fluence was sorted and formatted for each solar particle event. After determining the contribution to skin dose for oxygen, the time evolution of each event was analyzed. After analyzing the raw count data, a threshold was set that could be applied to each event. Using this threshold count rate as the starting point, each event was plotted and fitted with a smoothing polynomial function. The slope calculated from this function was then plotted against the previously calculated skin dose and a Weibull function was fitted to the data. The resulting plot provides a method to predict the cumulative dose due to the oxygen fluence over the first 24 hours of an event and thereby provide a warning of future high dose rate in time to achieve significant dose sparing for most events. For the ten events that delivered the highest oxygen dose, the dose sparing that could be achieved by taking shelter when the high dose rate was predicted was greater than 70 percent for all but one event. The one outlier achieved a dose paring of only 57 percent.

Nature preservation directly depends on the environmental education of the society. Compared to the other member states of the European Union the ecological culture in Lithuania is still low. Morals is of utmost importance in achieving ecological culture. Environmental events is one of the forms for developing a modern personality, who understands and is able to solve the issues of nature preservation. Environmental evens (presentations, actions, excursions, etc.) should be intended not only to promote interest in environment but also participation in preserving it. This paper reviews the results of a survey carried out among the schoolchildren (5 – 8) of Vilnius Fabijoniškės and Vilnius Žemyna secondary schools. The aim of the survey was to analyse the importance of environmental events as a means of ecological and moral education. Concluding the results of the survey it may be said that the indifference of schoolchildren to nature is related to lack of environmental education in the family. Accordind to the data of the survey even 76.3 percent of respondents consider enviromental events effective. The school system developing a modern personality, who is able to live in the rapidly changing world and solve the issues that arise in it, including enviromental ones, should develop and implement environmental programs and take part more in the different programs supported by international funds.

The safety of antipsychotic use in elderly persons has recently been questioned. The incidence of adverse events (AEs) (extrapyramidal syndromes (EPS), cerebrovascular and cardiac events, and all-cause mortality) in the elderly users of first-generation antipsychotics (FGAs) and second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) was compared. Risks of AEs in antipsychotic-exposed persons and non-exposed individuals were also assessed. A population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted in the elderly Manitoba residents who received their first antipsychotic medication between April 1, 2000 and March 31, 2007. Cox proportional hazards models were built to compare risks of AEs in FGA and SGA users, as well as in non-exposed subjects. SGAs were associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality (adjusted HR 0.683, 95% CI 0.577–0.809) and a higher risk of myocardial infarction (1.614 [1.024–2.543]) compared to FGAs. No significant differences between FGAs and SGAs were found for cerebrovascular events, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failure (CHF) but a higher incidence of EPS was observed for FGAs compared to risperidone. Both FGA and SGA users were at a higher risk of cerebrovascular events (FGAs 1.415 [1.114–1.797]; SGAs 1.611 [1.388–1.869]) and CHF (FGAs 1.228 [0.893–1.689]; SGAs 1.242 [1.003–1.536]) compared to non-exposed subjects. Only FGA-users were at a higher risk of death compared to non-exposed subjects (FGAs 1.387 [1.065–1.805]; SGAs 0.824 [0.708–0.959]). Both FGA and risperidone use were associated with a higher risk of EPS (FGAs 3.503 [2.271–5.403]; risperidone 1.733 [1.214–2.472]). Both classes of antipsychotics might lead to potentially life-threatening AEs. Neither FGAs nor SGAs seem to have a superior overall safety profile. Antipsychotic pharmacotherapy should be prescribed in elderly persons after careful consideration of all risks and benefits.

Feminists of the past two and a half decades have been influential in the debates about the meaning of womanhood. Transsexualism as a state of being, and transsexuals themselves, have periodically presented challenging issues to the discussion. As a result, the boundaries of womanhood are being questioned and membership in sex and gender categories are being contested by transsexuals and non-transsexuals within feminist debates. Conflicts arise when questions of transsexuals' womanhood come to the forefront, and one controversy centres on whether sex and gender statuses change for transsexuals. Do male-to-female transsexuals become women (if ever)? Do male-to-female transsexuals become female (if ever)? Should transsexual women be included in women-only events? The last question stirs the debate that has been brewing in feminist communities since the 1970s. And because women-only events are largely organized and attended by lesbians, lesbians have often been at the forefront of feminist debates about the womanhood of transsexual women. There has been much lively debate in the 1970s and again in the 1990s on the topic of transsexualism, however there has been little research specifically looking at feminist attitudes about transsexuals. To expand our knowledge in these areas, the concepts of womanhood is explored from a feminist perspective. A context is provided with a review of radical feminist, radical lesbian feminist and lesbian separatist theories. Feminist literature on the issue of transsexualism is presented to show the many sides of the debate. Praxis of radical feminism is illustrated using the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival as an example of women-only space, a model of feminist-separatist utopia and a site where transsexual women have not been welcome. With this foundation, analysis of survey question results are presented to determine whether feminist attitudes, as presented in the literature, aptly reflect non-lesbian and lesbian feminist perspectives on transsexuals' womanhood. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the findings and suggestions for further study. / Graduate / 0626