本研究主要係以公部門為推廣觀光相關政策時所運用的政策行銷活動來達成所欲的政策目的時，公部門內部基於民主政治的治理責任環境下，所應具備的概念民主回應性，專業責任，及課責性等進行探討分析。由於目前台灣由公部門主辦的觀光行銷活動，多如牛毛，如何說明辦理該項活動的正當性，並與告知民眾該活動的成果效益等，應視為同等重要的課題。也因此相關的政策行銷工具在運用時，公部門除了重視其執行過程與活動成果外，如何運用評估的成果，向民眾報告說明該項活動辦理的合理性與正當性，因應民主治理過程中，外界對公部門的監督與符合回應的期待。 本研究發現公部門在進行台灣燈會政策行銷活動時，評估是一連串動態且隨時進行的工作，從活動開始前的預評估，規劃階段與執行的過程評估，到結束後對活動的成果評估，由分工到執行，在公部門內部已建立起相關內控的運作模式，期能順利將活動舉辦完成，交出一張漂亮成績單，完成專業性的責任。另外，也藉由不同的組織網絡整合公私協力資源並建立起良好的府際關係，共同建構出每年具有該縣市特色之獨一無二的台灣燈會，增加每年燈會的可看性，精采性與豐富性，賦與每一次燈會不同的生命力。 台灣燈會所創造出來觀光潮流，應已達成發展觀光政策的目標。雖然許多人認為各縣市政府已有能力辦理自己的元宵節慶活動，但由於該活動仍能堅持其活動的精神與主軸，非以單一行銷活動觀之，確實可稱之為帶動台灣發展節慶觀光的重要政策。筆者認為該活動繼續辦理，有助於協助其他縣市提升相關國際宣傳手法與觀光知名度。未來在進行政策評估的作法上有如下的建議： 1.因地制宜設定政策目標 2.效益評估除量化指標外，其多元價值仍待質化性指標的建立 3.整體政策評估仍宜由中央單位以長時序效益進行整合評估 / The main objective of this research is to explore and analyze the various responses required from government agencies (e.g., democratic responsiveness, professional responsibilities and accountabilities, etc.) under a democratic governance environment when they organize marketing events to promote tourism-related policies. Considering the large amount of government-hosted tourism events at the present stage, an equally important task is to properly explain to the general public the legitimacy and effectiveness of such promotional events. When applying the relevant policy-promoting instruments, therefore, government agencies should not only pay attention to the process and achievements of the event, but also explain to the general public the rationality and legitimacy of such activities, making good use of the evaluation results. This approach will help to meet the public’s expectations in the process of democratic governance, i.e., monitoring and receiving proper response from government agencies. In the research process, it is discovered that government agencies have initiated an ongoing series of evaluation tasks for the Taiwan Lantern Festival, which were carried out throughout the pre-event, planning, execution and post-event stages. Through the whole process of job division and project execution, the government agencies have already established relevant internal control models to ensure the successful completion of the projects, thereby satisfying public expectations and fulfilling their professional responsibilities. Furthermore, in the process of integrating resources from different public and private networks, the government agencies have also built up good interaction among one another. With their collaborative efforts, they have successfully organized the yearly event of the Taiwan Lantern Festival, representing the unique culture of the respective cities/counties. Their efforts have enriched the contents of the annual lantern festivals, and endowed them with additional charm and unique vitality. The tourist growth created by the Taiwan Lantern Festival should have fulfilled the policy goals of developing the tourist business. While many people believe that the city/county governments are now fully competent to organize their own lantern festival activities, there is still a consistent theme and spirit for this event. Rather than a single and independent marketing activity, it is in fact considered an important policy that guides Taiwan’s festival tourist market. The author therefore holds the view that the continuity of this event will contribute to the improvement of international popularity of and marketing expertise for other cities. The author also has the following suggestions regarding policy evaluation in future: -Policy goals should be established based on the local environment and requirements. -Apart from quantitative indicators, qualitative indicators should also be established in the process of effectiveness evaluation, so as to take into account the diversified value of the events. -As for integrated policy evaluation, it is recommended that evaluation should be conducted by the central government on a consolidated basis, taking into account long-term effectiveness.

<p>Uppsatsens syfte är att analysera om det finns en medvetenhet om regional identitet och image inom regionen Satakunta, samt om åsikterna om utformningen av den regionala identiteten och imagen är konkretiserade, eller inte. Utifrån en studie av Jazzmusikfestivalen i Björneborg undersöks detta. I och med det diskuterar författaren huruvida evenemang har en roll i skapandet av en attraktiv och konkurrenskraftig region. Syftet är också att undersöka om det finns samarbeten i regionen för att göra den attraktiv och konkurrenskraftig. För att få svar på syftet har författaren använt sig av primärdata i form av intervjuer med representanter från Björneborgs stad, Björneborg turistbyrå, Landskapsförbundet, Satakunta Tourist och Björneborg Jazzmusikfestival. Två av intervjuerna har genomförts via telefon och fyra intervjuer har genomförts via e-post.</p><p>Resultaten visar att det i Satakunta finns en medvetenhet om regionens identitet och image, men att det inte finns en gemensam åsikt om vad dessa är. Det finns även olika åsikter om förmågan att skapa regional identitet och image i regionen. Undersökningen visar att Jazzmusikfestivalen bidrar till regional identitet och image i regionen Satakunta, men att den i huvudsak bidrar till detta i staden Björneborg. Festivalen bidrar även till en attraktiv och konkurrenskraftig region, trots att det inte finns en gemensam tanke i regionen om vad som är regionens identitet och image och skapandet av dessa. Resultaten visar även att det finns samarbeten för att göra regionen attraktiv och konkurrenskraftig.</p>

<p>A general time-to-event data analysis known as event history analysis is considered. The focus is on the analysis of time-to-event data using Cox's regression model when the time to the event may be measured from different origins giving several observable time scales and when longitudinal measurements are involved. For the multiple time scales problem, procedures to choose a basic time scale in Cox's regression model are proposed. The connections between piecewise constant hazards, time-dependent covariates and time-dependent strata in the dual time scales are discussed. For the longitudinal measurements problem, four methods known in the literature together with two proposed methods are compared. All quantitative comparisons are performed by means of simulations. Applications to the analysis of infant mortality, morbidity, and growth are provided.</p>

<p>Several physical mechanisms concerning the impact of Rossby waves on ozone distribution and circulation in the stratosphere and troposphere are studied in the thesis.</p><p>Summertime total ozone variability over Middle Asia and Northern Scandinavia shows similar wave-like behaviour with typical periods of 10-20 days and amplitudes of 20-50 Dobson units. These variations are caused by eastward travelling Rossby waves in the lower stratosphere. The same mechanism plays the primary role in the formation of an intense low ozone episode over Scandinavia in August 2003. A strong anticyclone was formed in the troposphere over Europe as a part of a Rossby wave train. The anticyclone coincides with a displaced Artic pool of low-ozone air in the stratosphere aloft of the anticyclone. A combination of the two above-mentioned processes results in the total ozone minimum over Northern Europe for summer 2003.</p><p>Interannual variability of the atmospheric circulation and total ozone during winter is strongly controlled by the diabatic (Brewer-Dobson) circulation which is driven by upward propagating waves from the troposphere. In the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes, wintertime total ozone shows antiphase behaviour with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index on interannual and decadal time-scales. Weaker (stronger) wave activity leads to less (more) northward ozone transport and to a stronger (weaker) AO.</p><p>Rossby wave activity occurs as episodic wave events and this wave forcing is not uniform during winter. The November-December stratospheric eddy heat flux is strongly anticorrelated with the January-February eddy heat flux in the midlatitude stratosphere and troposphere. Weaker upward wave fluxes in early winter lead to stronger upward wave fluxes from the troposphere as well as to a stronger polar night jet during midwinter and vice versa. Hence upward wave activity fluxes in early winter define, to a considerable extent, the subsequent evolution of the midwinter circulation in the stratosphere and troposphere.</p>

<p>Renal artery stenosis (RAS) is a potentially curable cause of hypertension and azotemia. Besides intra-arterial renal angiography there are several non-invasive techniques utilized to diagnose patients with suspicion of renal artery stenosis. Removing the stenosis by revascularization to restore unobstructed blood flow to the kidney is known to improve and even cure hypertension/azotemia, but is associated with a significant complication rate. </p><p>To visualize renal arteries with x-ray techniques a contrast medium must be used. In a randomized, prospective study the complications of two types of contrast media (CO₂ and ioxaglate) were compared. CO₂ was not associated with acute nephropathy, but induced nausea and had lower attenuation differences compared to Ioxaglate. Acute nephropathy was related to the ioxaglate dose and the risk was evident even at very low doses if the patients were azotemic with creatinine clearance <40 ml/min. </p><p>Evaluating patients for clinically relevant renal artery stenosis can be done utilizing several non-invasive techniques. MRA was retrospectively evaluated and shown to be accurate in detecting hemodynamically significant RAS. In a prospective study of 58 patients, evaluated with four methods for renal artery stenosis, it was shown that MRA and CTA were significantly better than ultrasonography and captopril renography in detecting hemodynamically significant RAS. The standard of reference was trans-stenotic pressure gradient measurement, defining a stenosis as significant at a gradient of ≥15 mmHg. The discrepancies were mainly found in the presence of borderline stenosis.</p><p>The outcome of percutaneous revascularization procedures showed a technical success rate of 95%, clinical benefit in 63% of treated patients, 30-day mortality 1.5% and major complication rate of 13%. The major complication rate for patients with baseline serum creatinine >300µmol/l was 32%. Our results compare favorably with published studies and guidelines.</p>

The increasing popularity of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapies as health care options warrants thorough examination of the efficacy and safety evidence around these therapies. This thesis explores the intersection of TCM and fatigue using two rigorous methodologies: systematic reviews (SRs) and a randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT). In order to inform the development of an RCT of acupuncture for infectious mononucleosis (mono), a common condition with no known cure, characterized by profound fatigue, we examined the literature on TCM treatment of mono as well as another fatigue condition, idiopathic chronic fatigue (ICF). Additionally, we investigated the literature on the safety of pediatric acupuncture. SRs of TCM efficacy in mono and ICF determined that although clinical trials exist, methodological flaws compromised their validity. In particular, studies published as RCTs were found to lack proper randomization. Inclusion of these studies in the SRs would have been inappropriate and demonstrates the importance of verifying RCT methods. We also present the results of the first known SR of pediatric acupuncture safety. This review was comprehensive, including a large number of databases and publications in any language. Synthesis of the results from those studies that included a denominator produced mild adverse event estimates of 16.3/100 (95% CI 11.221.5) per patient, for RCTs, and 6.3/100 (95% CI 4.97.7) per patient, for cohort studies, with a combined estimate of 7.8/100 (95% CI 6.49.2) per patient. We developed and conducted an RCT of acupuncture for mono, although limitations to recruitment resulted in the enrolment of only three participants. The primary result of the small sample size was to restrict the determination of treatment effect, however, successful implementation of other elements is informative to further research in this area. In addition, we determined the local 5-year Monospot positive incidence rate to be 1.11/1000 (95% CI 0.953.2) for all ages and 5.46/1000 (95% CI 0.8910.0) for the 15-25 year old group. This dissertation examined the evidence around TCM and fatigue and provides recommendations that are aimed at increasing the value of research and the safety and efficacy of practice in this area.

Signal detection from Adverse Event Reports (AERs) is important for identifying and analysing drug safety concern after a drug has been released into the market. A safety signal is defined as a possible causal relation between an adverse event and a drug. There are a number of safety signal detection algorithms available for detecting drug safety concern. They compare the ratio of observed count to expected count to find instances of disproportionate reportings of an event for a drug or combination of events for a drug. In this thesis, we present an algorithm to mine the AERs to identify drugs which show sudden and large changes in patterns of reporting of adverse events. Unlike other algorithms, the proposed algorithm creates time series for each drug and use it to identify start of a potential safety problem. A novel vectorized timeseries utilizing multiple attributes has been proposed here. First a time series with a small time period was created; then to remove local variations of the number of reports in a time period, a time-window based averaging was done. This method helped to keep a relatively long time-series, but eliminated local variations. The steps in the algorithm include partitioning the counts on attribute values, creating a vector out of the partitioned counts for each time period, use of a sliding time window, normalizing the vectors and computing vector differences to find the changes in reporting over time. Weights have been assigned to attributes to highlight changes in the more significant attributes. The algorithm was tested with Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) datasets from Food and Drug Administation (FDA). From AERS datasets the proposed algorithm identified five drugs that may have safety concern. After searching literature and the Internet it was found that the five drugs the algorithm identified, two were recalled, one was suspended, one had to undergo label change and the other one has a lawsuit pending against it.

Over the last decade our understanding of mercury cycling has dramatically changed. Evidence of rapid atmospheric oxidation has been observed in the Arctic, Antarctic, the MBL, coastal environments, saline lakes, and the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere. These results show that, Hg0, can undergo rapid gas-phase oxidation under standard atmospheric conditions. However, the mechanism and importance of this transformation is still unclear. The goal of this work was two-fold: to investigate of the kinetics of potential pathway for the gas phase oxidation of atmospheric mercury and to develop new laser based techniques, which can be employed for both laboratory and field studies of Hg(0) and the products of mercury oxidation. First and foremost, this work determined kinetic rate coefficients for the potentially important mercury reactions. Rate coefficients were determined using a Pulse Laser Photolysis - Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLP-LIF) technique monitoring one or more of the following species, Hg(0), Cl, Br, HgCl, and HgBr. The concentrations of these species were measured by LIF as the reaction occurred and a concentration vs. time profile was generated. From these profiles a rate coefficient for the reaction can be obtained. In the course of this work kinetic rate coefficients for the following mercury reactions were measured. Hg(0) + Cl + M --> HgCl + M Hg(0) + Br + M --> HgBr + M HgBr + M --> Hg(0) + Br + M HgBr + Br --> products HgCl + O2 --> products This work is the first direct measurement of a kinetic rate coefficient for these reactions, and the first work which employed one photon LIF to monitor the HgCl and HgBr products. The second aspect of this work was the development of new laser based techniques to detect atmospheric mercury and its oxidation products for both laboratory and field application. In this work a LIF technique was develop to detect HgCl and HgBr. In addition, a two photon LIF technique initially developed by Bauer et al., 2002 was verified and expanded. The two photon LIF technique was used to directly monitor Hg(0) atoms in-situ, to monitor Hg(0) evolving form a gold tube, and to monitor the Hg(0) evolving from the thermal decomposition of reactive gaseous mercury collected on a KCl coated or uncoated denuder. This work represents a significant advance in the development of a viable method the detect mercury and the mercury oxidation products in the laboratory and in the field and is the first study to observe clear differences in the characteristic desorption profiles of HgO and HgX2. This work has broad implications, it enhanced our current knowledge concerning the biogeochemical cycling of mercury, broadened our understanding of the mercury chemistry in high halogen environment, and provided new techniques which can be applied in future field and laboratory studies.

THIS THESIS PRESENTS an empirical ethnographic study that has been conducted as fieldwork within army command organizations, leading to a qualitative analysis of data. The title of the thesis captures the contents of both command work and research, both domains being affected by new technologies during a period of drastic changes in the military institution. The overriding research question was why efforts to implement modern information technology are so slow, costly, and why the contribution from the output as regards higher control efficiency is so uncertain. Two cases will be described and analysed. One is a meeting and the other is the development of a computer artefact. Based on these two cases, the study suggests that social value and not only rational control efficiency defines what is applied, both in the development process and in practice. Knowledge and power, expertise and authority, represented by experts and formal leaders have to be brought together if the work is to be efficient. Both knowledge from research and information technology will be rejected, if considered irrelevant. I have called this applying a rationality of practice. From the case analysis it can be said that command work is not ordinary managerial work. Rather, it is a kind of design work, dynamic and hard to define and control. Command work is knowledge-intensive; it designs and produces symbols. Therefore it is very flexible and involves interpretation and negotiation of both its content and products. The most important symbol is the Army, which must be visible and credible, built from real components. Command work is pragmatic and opportunistic, conducted by experts in the modern military command structure who transform the operational environment, and control it through controlling actions. In that respect autonomy, a prerequisite to meet evolving events—frictions—and power become core issues, interchangeable goals and means for flexible social control, in cybernetic terms variety. Key concepts are social value, function and visibility. Actors must be visible in the command work, and make work visible. Consequently, when designing control tools, such as information systems, the design challenge is to reconcile dynamic and pragmatic demands for power, autonomy and control with demands for stability. Such an organization becomes a viable system, one that can survive, because there is no conflict between its mind and physical resources. In operational terms, this means having freedom of action. The prerequisite to achieve this is one perspective on knowledge and information and that information systems match the needs growing from within the work because work builds the organization.

A general time-to-event data analysis known as event history analysis is considered. The focus is on the analysis of time-to-event data using Cox's regression model when the time to the event may be measured from different origins giving several observable time scales and when longitudinal measurements are involved. For the multiple time scales problem, procedures to choose a basic time scale in Cox's regression model are proposed. The connections between piecewise constant hazards, time-dependent covariates and time-dependent strata in the dual time scales are discussed. For the longitudinal measurements problem, four methods known in the literature together with two proposed methods are compared. All quantitative comparisons are performed by means of simulations. Applications to the analysis of infant mortality, morbidity, and growth are provided.