Much of the biodiversity in a forest comes from the understory vegetation. However, centuries of fire suppression in the western United States have made human-implemented disturbance necessary for reinstating natural disturbance cycles. However, the mechanical thinning and prescribed burning treatments used by land managers may differentially affect the response of the understory community. This study aimed to compare how prescribed fire and mechanical thinning treatments, with the size and severity of those treatments, affect understory plant communities in aspen-conifer forests over time. We sampled the understory community in burned, mechanically thinned, and untreated forest stands one, three, or five years post-treatment. Within these treatment areas, we measured understory cover, species richness, and leaf area index in belt transects, and we calculated species diversity and non-native cover for each transect. Understory cover increased in burn and mechanical treatments over time and was significantly higher in burned treatments than in untreated stands five years after treatments. Additionally, understory cover was highest in large, low-severity fires. Species richness also increased in burned areas as time since treatment increased. Species richness and species diversity positively correlated with canopy openness in untreated plots, while the cover of non-native species positively correlated with fire severity. Large, lower-severity burns had the most significant positive impact on understory plant communities, but these impacts may take time to become apparent.

The primary objective of the thesis will be to focus on patent protection of software under the European Patent Convention, by analyzing the different approaches that the European Patent Office has taken into consideration since the mid-1980s. These approaches are derived from the different decisions that emanate from the Technical Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office. The thesis will examine the most relevant decisions illustrating the juridical tendencies and basis that have been utilized to decide over the patentability of computer programs. The analysis will conclude with the latest approach taken by the Technical Board of the European Patent Office. The study will examine the patentability requirements of inventions in general established within the European Patent Convention. Sources that will be utilized to carry out this research will include case law, legislation, specialized legal commentary; journals and books. The present study sustains that computer programs may be patented as long as they comply with all the general requirements of an invention prescribed under the European Patent Convention together with the condition established by case law called the technical character requirement. Nevertheless, due to the fact that the Technical Boards of Appeal are not bound by previous case law, the current position could keep evolving as it relies on the stance of  the European Patent Office on patentability of computer programs which is seems to be influenced by the changes in the technological world

This thesis demonstrates that, while generally seen as a non-democratic activity, lobbying should in fact be viewed as an important part of democratic policymaking, providing valuable input into law and policy, particularly in areas where expertise is at a premium. Constructing a theoretical model of democracy and using the field of intellectual property as a focal point, the role of private actors is examined across a series of case studies: the 2011 Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, the 2010 Digital Economy Act, and the proposed 2002 EU Computer Implemented Inventions Directive. Each case study is based upon a combination of secondary sources and the first-hand experiences of certain actors involved and in each case the lobbying activity is critically evaluated in light of the features and normative conditions of the democratic model. This study ultimately shows both the positive aspects and negative aspects of lobbying from a democratic viewpoint, noting that the importance of stakeholder input into the law and policy that will affect those stakeholders is essential. It also shows, however, that equality of access to, and influence over, policymakers is far from satisfactory and that until such inequalities can be resolved, lobbying cannot be fully justified under my model of democracy.

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is an evidence-based practice targeting the communication deficits of children with complex communication needs (CCN). While young children with communication disorders are attending preschool and using AAC, and specifically speech-generating devices (SGDs), with increasing frequency, best practices for implementation with this population are largely unexplored. In an effort to contribute to the knowledge base for teachers, the essential communication partners for children in the classroom setting, this research explored the interactions of four teacher-child dyads and analyzed the prompts and cues used to elicit communicative acts from the children. Results of statistical and descriptive analyses revealed that, while teachers overwhelmingly favor and use verbal prompts over other stimuli, these prompts were no more effective in eliciting communicative acts. These results indicate that teachers would benefit from instruction in a variety of techniques for enhancing communication via AAC; future research directions towards this purpose are detailed.

The complexity of safety-related embedded computer systems is steadilyincreasing. Besides verifying that such systems implement the correct functionality, it is essential to verify that they also present an acceptable level of robustness. Robustness is in this thesis defined as the resilience of hardware, software or systems against errors that occur during runtime. One way of performing robustness assessment is to carry out fault injection, also known as fault insertion testing from certain safety standards. The idea behind fault injection is to accelerate the occurrence of faults in the system to evaluate its behavior under the influence of anticipated faults, and to evaluate error handling mechanisms. Model-based development is becoming more and more common for the development of safety-related software. Thus, in this thesis we investigate how we can benefit from conducting fault injection experiments on behavior models of software. This is defined as model-implemented fault injection in this thesis, since additional model artifacts are added to support the injection of faults that are activated during simulation. In particular, this thesis addresses injection of hardware fault effects (e.g. bit-level errors in microcontrollers) into Simulink® models. To evaluate the method, a fault injection tool has been developed (called MODIFI), that is able to perform fault injection into Simulink behavior models. MODIFI imports tailored fault libraries that define the effects of faults according to an XML-schema. The fault libraries are converted into executable model blocks that are added to behavior models and activated during runtime to emulate the effect of faults. Further, we use a method called minimal cut sets generation to increase the usefulness of the tool. During the work within MOGENTES, an EU 7th framework programme project that focused on model-based generation of test cases for dependable embedded systems, fault injection experiments have been performed on safety related models with the MODIFI tool. Experiments were also performed using traditional fault injection methods, and in particular hardware-implemented fault injection, to evaluate the correlation between the methods. The results reveal that fault injection on software models is efficient and useful for robustness assessment and that results produced with MODIFI appear to be representative for the results obtained with other fault injection methods. However, a software model suppresses implementation details, thus leading to fewer locations where faults can be injected. Therefore it cannot entirely replace traditional fault injection methods, but by performing model-implemented fault injection in early design phases an overview of the robustness of a model can be obtained, given these limitations. It can also be useful for testing of error handling mechanisms that are implemented in the behavior model. / QC 20111205

There is little empirical evidence to indicate the efficacy of early intervention approaches used with young children with cleft lip and/or palate (CLP). The positive effects of a focused stimulation approach have been documented with children having speech and language deficits, although an articulation model has predominated in intervention of young children with CLP. This study examined the effects of a focused stimulation language intervention and a modification of focused stimulation that emphasized stop consonants through overaspiration of stops (Golding-Kushner, 2001). Four mother-child dyads participated in the study. Each mother received training regarding the implementation of the two treatments. The two interventions were counterbalanced among the four dyads and spanned a total of eight weeks in length. Results indicated that both of the treatments increased the vocabulary usage and reduced the number of compensatory articulation errors in the speech of the children.

In this study, the author examined the effects of training four parents from low-socioeconomic environments to use Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) with their young children with language impairment. The investigator used a modified Teach-Model-Coach-Review method to teach parents to use the following EMT strategies during 8-10 individualized, home-based sessions: matched turns, expansions, time delays and milieu teaching prompts. A single-case multiple-baseline design across-behaviors replicated across four parent/child dyads was used to evaluate the parents' use of the EMT strategies. Child language outcomes were also assessed using pre- and post-intervention language samples. All parents learned and demonstrated use of each language support strategy to set criterion levels. Results from this study indicated a functional relation between the brief parent-implemented language intervention training and parents’ use of language support strategies. Additionally, all four children demonstrated gains in expressive language. Additional research is needed to assess fidelity and dosage of parents’ use of strategies on specific child language outcomes and to determine how to facilitate maintenance of parents’ use of strategies over time.

<p>Computer programs must give a technical effect that goes beyond"normal physical interaction"to be considered to belong to a technical field. The invention shall be be susceptible of industrial application, which means that it should be possible to reproduce or use in any other industrial way. The reqirement that the invention shall be new means that the technique must not be previously known because of patents, published articles, etc. That an invention shall be a contribution to the state of the art in a technical field means that the invention shall not be obvious to invent for a person skilled in the art. Patents do effect the innovation among the inventers, but in most industries most inventions would be invented independent if there was a patent system or not. Only in pharmaceuticals- and chemicals industries, the patent is of a great importance. Patents are probably of lesser importance for the computer industry than for those industries, even though the industry is of great importance for many other industries and therefor, the patent system can be of great importance for some computer-implemented inventions as well. There is a risque the the competition is negatively affected by the patent system, becuase of the monopoly it gives. I believe, though, that the gain of the patent system compensates for the risque of imperfections in the market. The free movement for goods, persons, services and capital will probably not be affected if the proposal of the directive about patentibility of computer-implemented invention will get passed.</p>

Computer programs must give a technical effect that goes beyond"normal physical interaction"to be considered to belong to a technical field. The invention shall be be susceptible of industrial application, which means that it should be possible to reproduce or use in any other industrial way. The reqirement that the invention shall be new means that the technique must not be previously known because of patents, published articles, etc. That an invention shall be a contribution to the state of the art in a technical field means that the invention shall not be obvious to invent for a person skilled in the art. Patents do effect the innovation among the inventers, but in most industries most inventions would be invented independent if there was a patent system or not. Only in pharmaceuticals- and chemicals industries, the patent is of a great importance. Patents are probably of lesser importance for the computer industry than for those industries, even though the industry is of great importance for many other industries and therefor, the patent system can be of great importance for some computer-implemented inventions as well. There is a risque the the competition is negatively affected by the patent system, becuase of the monopoly it gives. I believe, though, that the gain of the patent system compensates for the risque of imperfections in the market. The free movement for goods, persons, services and capital will probably not be affected if the proposal of the directive about patentibility of computer-implemented invention will get passed.

Background: It is a well-known phenomenon that nurses and other oncology staff have a tendency to ascribe patients with cancer more problems and suffering than the patients themselves report. Aim: The overall aim of the present thesis was therefore to gain increased knowledge and understanding of dis/agreement between patients with cancer and nurses regarding their perception of patients’ situation and of the importance of patient-nurse dis/agreement in clinical practice. Methods: A prospective comparative design was used. Data were collected from a sample of 90 consecutively recruited patient-nurse pairs. Each pair consisted of a patient with cancer, newly admitted to a ward, and a nurse responsible for that patient’s care. Data were collected from the pairs with corresponding self-administrated questionnaires on two occasions: directly after the admission interview and on the patient’s third day on the ward. Results: At the group level, a distinct pattern was shown in which nurses ascribed the patients more emotional distress, less coping resources and a lower quality of life than the patients themselves reported. In short, the results revealed the following clinical importance of patient-nurse dis/agreement. With respect to how nurses act in relation to their perceptions of patients’ emotional distress, patient-nurse dis/agreement did not seem to be important; with few exceptions, nurses’ implemented care did not differ when it was directed at more as compared to less distressed patients. Further, nurses’ general tendency to overestimate cancer patients’ problems and suffering had no influence on patients’ satisfaction with received care and nurses’ satisfaction with provided care. However, patients cared for by nurses who underestimated their level of depression were less satisfied with those nurses’ care. In addition, the more frequently the nurse had implemented care characterized by a trusting relationship, the higher patients’ and nurses’ satisfaction with received/provided care. Conclusions: Initial patient-nurse dis/agreement concerning patients’ situation appears to be of little significance to nurses’ caring behaviour and to patients’ and nurses’ subsequent evaluation of received and provided care.