A significant amount of research in the field of small business management has correlated small firm performance with the sophistication of overall management skills (see, for example, Gasse, 1997; Gadenne, 1998; Zinger, leBrasseur and Zannibi, 2001; Balderson, 2003) and more particularly problem solving skills. Yet, even though problem solving skills are at the core of the small business management process (Jennings and Beaver, 1997), there has been little research to date that has focused on understanding the actual approach small business owner-managers take to solve the problems they encounter as the present study has done, through the utilization of an interpretive research design applied to a sample of small firms. The primary purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate the nature of problem solving practices adopted by 11 small business owner-managers on Central Vancouver Island, Canada, by identifying the types of problems encountered in the years following their establishment, the actions taken to solve these problems and the outcomes of these actions for the firm. It examines the characteristics of the problemm solving approaches utilized by owner-managers as they encountered problems, and identifies how they perceived the impact of the approach taken on the continued survival of their firm. The methodological approach taken in this study is positioned within an emergent body of research in the field of small business and entrepreneurship that applies an interpretive paradigm to uncover the complex facets of how individuals develop their capabilities and management practices (Chell and Allman, 2003) with a particular emphasis on the small business owner-manager. The interpretive assumptions guiding the research process have allowed new understandings to emerge about problem solving in small firms within the wider context of managerial capability as a critical contributor to small business survival. More specifically, the critical incident technique method (Flanagan, 1954; Chell, 1998), along with an approach to data analysis and coding that draws from grounded theory (Glaser, 1992; Glaser and Strauss, 1999; Strauss and Corbin, 1998), are combined and applied as a qualitative research strategy. This strategy has not previously been used in relation to the study of problem solving in small firms. This interpretive paradigm allows the exploration of how small business owner-managers attach meaning to their subjective experiences and the implications of these perceptions for the business outcomes of the firm, specifically as they relate to solving critical business problems. As a result, the interpretive methods applied in the course of this study make a novel contribution to the field, since they have yielded new interpretations on the nature of problem solving processes in the sample of small firms studied. The findings presented here reveal the intuitive, improvised and non-linear nature of how problems are actually solved in these small firms, in contrast to a number of well-known theoretical research frameworks that propose well-defined and delineated steps in the problem solving process. The results of this study make a valuable contribution to building new theory in this area of inquiry by demonstrating how more dynamic processes occur in practice. An alternative way to conceptualize problem solving in small firms is presented in Chapter 6, A Holistic Framework for Problem Solving in Small Firms.

Lateral diffusion of membrane components (lipids and proteins) is an important membrane property to measure since the essential process of absorption of anti-cancer and other drugs -some of which are not soluble in lipids and therefore would not be able to penetrate the cell membrane through passive diffusion- lies on it. In particular, the procedure of diffusion into the cell cytoplasm is reliant on free volumes in the membrane (passive diffusion) as well as carrier proteins (facilitated diffusion). By enhancing the mobility of lipids and/or proteins, the possibility of the carrier protein to "encapsulate" pharmacological components maxim- izes, as a "scanning" of the proteins gets performed due to the fluid phase of a biological membrane. At the same time, the increased mobility of the lipids facilitates the passage of lipid-soluble molecules into the cell. Thus, given that the success of anticancer treatments heavily depends on their absorption by the cell, a significant enhancement of the cell mem- brane permeability (permeabilisation) is rendered vital to the applicability of the technique. For this reason, there is augmented interest in combined methods such as Nanotechnology based drug delivery that is focused on the development of optimally designed therapeutic agents along with the application of shock waves to enhance the membrane permeability to the agents. This study examines the impact of shock waves on a numerical model of a biological membrane. Cont/d.

CHDS State/Local / Since 9/11 much progress has been made by Federal, State and local authorities to prepare for future Catastrophic Incidents. The March 1, 2004 release of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) mandated the use of Unified Command and Incident Management Teams (IMTs) for multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional incidents. These teams have strong potential for improving complex incident management. However, the potential for interagency conflict threatens effectual IMT functioning in the absence of team skills instruction as part of a national training curriculum. The current curriculum teaches technical skills and ICS role responsibilities, and omits skills needed to build healthy team dynamics. Training for IMTs needs to include more than technical skills ("What to do"), and that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should expand the curriculum to include team dynamics ("How to do it"). Further, DHS need not "re-invent the wheel" when looking for sources of team dynamic theory, but need only look to and adapt the experience of business and academia. Over the past 20-25 years a variety of inter-organizational networks and Work Teams have been studied and field tested. This thesis examines literature lessons on the problems shared by Work Teams and IMTs, with particular emphasis on effectiveness and managing conflict. / Division Chief, Austin Fire Department

When information technology is incorporated into the operations of financial critical infrastructure, it brings with it a range of cyber risks, and mitigating them requires that firms and regulators develop capabilities to foster protection. The sophistication of cyber threats to the financial sector has been growing rapidly. Developed nations have worked hard to improve their knowledge of these threats and establish strategies to respond accordingly. However, in developing nations, both the understanding of the risks posed by cyber threats and the ability to address those risks have been slower to evolve. Developing the needed cybersecurity capabilities in developing countries encounter challenges that need to be identified and addressed. In order to begin to do that, this thesis reports on three studies conducted in the context of Ecuador. The first study identifies and assesses incident experiences, challenges, barriers, and desired actions reported by financial security managers with the objective of identifying strategies to enhance incident response capabilities. The second study begins with the security incidents reported by the Ecuadorian financial stakeholders during the first study and assesses the potential effectiveness of the government policy that is intended to address IT risk in the financial sector. The third study explores the challenges that universities face in order to provide cybersecurity instruction to protect critical infrastructure and explores potential strategies to advance cybersecurity education at the university level. In support of this work we collected data from national practitioners involved in responding to security incidents and in developing cybersecurity skills. Sixty-one in-depth, semi-structured interviews across five cities were conducted (95% in person, the rest by telephone) with respondents who had good knowledge in the subjects. Respondents come mainly from: the financial sector (CISOs, risk and IT managers, security chiefs, security officers, authorities); telecommunications sector, especially ISPs (managers, directors, engineers, authorities); and academia (deans, directors, professors). We transcribed all the interviews, coded them and conducted qualitative text analysis. This research finds that (1) the financial sector is already facing risks driven by outsiders and insiders that lead to fraud and operational errors and failures. The main barriers to improving protection are small team size, network visibility, inadequate internal coordination, technology updating, lack of training, and lack of awareness. The sector has little community support to respond to incidents, and the national legal framework has not supported appropriate prosecution of cyber criminals; (2) the national IT risk management policy has reasonably covered most countermeasures related to reported security incidents. There are however, several areas of gap, one of the most important is network security, which can enable sophisticated malware attacks; (3) today the level of cybersecurity education is mostly elementary in Ecuador. Academic interviewees at only four of the thirteen universities studied expressed confidence that they can provide students with reasonable preparation. Ecuador needs to design a national cybersecurity plan that prioritizes protection for critical infrastructure and should support strategies that allow the country to enhance cybersecurity capabilities. Properly designed these initiatives should allow the nation to develop a core structure to confront current and emergent cyber challenges in the financial sector and other critical national operations, and build the human resources necessary to continue that effort.

A direction of arrival (DoA) estimation technique for broadband microwave signals is proposed using a single ultrawideband antenna. It is inspired by the sound source localization ability of a human auditory system using just one ear (monaural localization). By exploiting the incident angle-dependent frequency response of a wideband antenna, the DoA of a broadband microwave signal can be estimated. The DoA estimation accuracies are evaluated for two antenna configurations and microwave signals with different signal-to-noise ratios. Encouraging the DoA estimation performance of the proposed technique is demonstrated in both simulation and experiment.

Financial elder abuse is gaining increasing attention from researchers and policy makers. Such abuse can include theft of money as well as misuse of assets such as property. This research applied judgement analysis methodology to explore professional decision making in the context of such abuse and to identify the nature of the cues used to detect and prevent abuse. Participants included social care, health and banking professionals, who were established as key decision makers. In Phase I, semi-structured interviews (n = 63) were conducted. The critical incident technique was used to identify cue use and decisions taken in the most recent case experienced. Key cues for both social care and health professionals included the nature of the 'financial problem suspected', the older persons 'mental capacity' and the 'identifier of the abuse', this being whether the abuse was directly observed or instead reported by a third party. A separate cue used by health professionals was the individual's 'physical capacity'. Banking professionals did not use physical or mental capacity as cues, but independently considered 'who was in charge of the money'. Decisions made by social care professionals included determining whether safeguarding procedures should be implemented. In Phase II, a factorial survey approach was applied whereby social care, health and banking professionals (n=223) were presented with case scenarios incorporating the cues from Phase I in addition to cues from literature review. Multiple regression analysis and incremental F-tests identified the cues that explained a significant amount of the variance in judgements of certainty of abuse and likelihood of taking action. For example, for social care and health professionals this included the older person's mental capacity, and the nature of the financial problem suspected. The findings could be used to develop a training tool to enable other professionals to improve their strategies for detection and prevention of financial elder abuse.

La fréquence et la sévérité des feux de forêt de grande ampleur ont augmenté dans les vingt dernières années, par la conjonction de trois tendances lourdes : le réchauffement climatique, l’extension des interfaces périurbaines et l’augmentation de la biomasse. Par conséquent, la fiabilisation des opérations de lutte, et en particulier des équipes de commandement, devient un enjeu important. Mais les opérations de secours constituent surtout une fenêtre particulièrement intéressante sur le fait organisationnel en général et les processus de construction de sens en particulier. En effet, les pompiers sont confrontés à des exigences organisationnelles en conflit : stabiliser le sens des situations pour assurer l’efficacité de l’action collective (processus de contrôle), et le réévaluer en permanence pour détecter et s’adapter aux évolutions inattendues (processus d’écoute). Le contrôle cherche à fiabiliser les apprentissages, capitalise les succès, ignore le bruit, simplifie, privilégie l’anticipation, et oriente l’attention sur les objectifs de l’action et sur la structure. L’écoute cherche à accroitre la validité des apprentissages, valorise l’improvisation, invente, détecte les signaux faibles, complexifie, rebondit, et oriente l’attention sur les conséquences de l’action et sur les relations interpersonnelles.L’hypothèse centrale de cette recherche est que la gestion de ces exigences contradictoires est une source majeure de haute fiabilité. Son design se base sur la comparaison de deux territoires (l’Ouest américain et le sud de la France), et combine plusieurs méthodes : l’observation directe des opérations de secours, l’observation des sessions d’entrainement, et des formations, ainsi qu’une expérimentation sur la plateforme de simulation de la Sécurité Civile française / The frequency and impact of large wildland fires have been increasing for the past 20 years, due to the conjunction of three long term trends: global warming, growing wildland-urban interface and increase in biomass. As a result, enhancing organizational reliability in Incident Management Teams is becoming increasingly important. Examining how firefighters face large disasters is also relevant for organization studies because these situations offer a perspective on organizing and sensemaking. Indeed, firefighters are under conflicting organizational requirements: stabilizing the sense of situations for effective collective action (control processes) and reassessing situations to detect and adapt to unexpected changes (mindful processes). Control focuses on lessons learned, capitalizes on success, ignores noise, simplifies, values anticipation and direct attention on plans and strategies. Mindfulness focuses on improvising, detects weak signals, is reluctant to simplify, values resilience and interpersonal relationships.The central hypothesis of this research is that the successful management of these opposite requirements is an important source of operational reliability. The research is based on a comparison between two territories (the American West and Southern France) and combines several methods: direct observation of firefighting operations, direct observation of Incident Management Teams trainings, the analysis of available archival data, as well as controlled experiments on a France’s Civil Protection simulation training platform

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This thesis investigates the problems in current naval aircraft cockpits as perceived by fleet naval aviators who are students at the U.S. Naval Aviation Safety School. A critical incident questionnaire provides data that examines the deficiencies of an individual aircraft. These individual aircraft deficiencies are then categorized into twelve major deficiency categories which are common to ore than one aircraft. Various recommendations are made concerning standards, specifications, cockpit research and cockpit design. / http://archive.org/details/pilotreportedhum00dani / Commander, United States Navy

<div> <p>This research investigated how to measure school active shooter safety against current policies in place regarding two different areas of school climate. Using the State of Indiana as a case study, 55 different schools from 38 different counties, various socioeconomic environments and school types (public, private, etc.) were surveyed. This collected data was used to represent a sample and representation of active shooter safety in K- 12 schools in Indiana. Research was conducted through a survey of approximately 40 questions posed to the principal of a school. The survey was anonymously distributed, and any identifiable information was assigned a numerical code. Anonymized demographics were considered and measured as well to determine how active shooter prevention is treated amongst them. After the study was conducted, the data shows how demographics, policies, and procedures affect school active shooter prevention. Analysis showed that school size may relate to lower social emotional security scores. Additionally, middle schools appear to score higher on social-emotional security than K-12 schools. Nonpublic schools also appear to score less on active shooter prevention than public schools. There is a moderate effect between the two. Schools and policymakers should account for this when developing active shooter safety plans. </p> </div> <br>

Introduktion: En patient som genomgår en operation har många behov. De vaknar upp i en ny främmande miljö där sjuksköterskan ansvarar för att säkerställa patientens mående. Sverige är idag ett mångkulturellt samhälle med människor med olika bakgrund och språk. Studier visar att språkbrister i vårdmötet mellan sjuksköterska och patient leder till ett sämre omhändertagande och minskar patientsäkerheten. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att identifiera strategier hos specialistsjuksköterskor vid omhändertagande av patienter med annat språk än svenska eller engelska på en postoperativ avdelning. Metod: Studien genomfördes med en kvalitativ, icke-experimentell deskriptiv design. Femton semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomfördes. All insamlad data analyserades med hjälp av Critical Incident Technique. Resultat: Fem generella strategier vid omhändertagande av patienter med annat språk än svenska eller engelska på en postoperativ vårdavdelning identifierades; att kommunicera utan ord, att kommunicera med ord, att nyttja någon som förstår, att skapa en säker vårdmiljö, att använda hjälpmedel. Resultatetvisade att omhändertagande av patienter med ett annat språk än svenska eller engelska i en postoperativ kontext, är komplext.  Slutsats:Specialistsjuksköterskor upplevde att omhändertagandet fungerade bra i sin nuvarande form, trots språkliga svårigheter i kommunikationen med patienter.  Då vissa situationer ändå beskrevs kunna förekomma går det inte dra slutsatsen att de strategier som framkom i denna studie fungerar fullt ut för att skapa en trygg och säker vård. Forskning bör utföras på patienternas upplevelse av situationen i denna kontext.    Nyckelord: Omvårdnad, Postoperativ avdelning, specialistsjuksköterska, strategier, språkbarriärer, kommunikation, Critical Incident Technique Keywords: Nursing, PACU, Nurse specialist, strategies, language barriers, communication, Critical Incident Technique