Nursing research has been performed during the last 20-30 years, about the next of kin’s vulnerability. Despite this, the health care system has had difficulties to integrate the next of kin in a way that gives support. The overall aim of the thesis was to describe and further explore the life situation of the next of kin to persons who are long-term ill, disabled, and/or older, and in need of care. Method: Multiple methods were used. Study I had a descriptive design, 44 next of kin of patients with multiple sclerosis were interviewed, latent content analysis was used for the analysis. Study II had a mixed method approach; the descriptive core study was analyzed with directed content analysis. The supplementary study with descriptive, correlative design was analyzed with descriptive and correlative statistics. Forty-four next of kin of patients with multiple sclerosis were interviewed; thereafter 37 of them answered a questionnaire about Quality of Life. Study III had a descriptive, explorative design. Twelve next of kin of older persons were interviewed with repeated informal conversational interviews, analyzed with latent content analysis. Study IV was cross-sectional with a descriptive, correlative design. Eighty-four next of kin of persons who were long-term ill, disabled, and/or older answered two questionnaires about Burden and Quality of Life that were analyzed with descriptive and correlative statistics. Results and Conclusions: Next of kin described a balance/imbalance in their relations to others and a high burden, but in general a good Quality of Life. Some next of kin also experienced chronic sorrow. Significant correlations were found between interpersonal relations and Quality of Life as a whole. Love and obligations were two anchor points on a continuum, describing the next of kin’s relationship to the ill/disabled person. The relationship with the health care personnel was described through cooperation and obligations. Good communication was seen as the key to balance the relationship with others. One possibility to achieve symmetrical communications is to adapt the Partnership Model, as a tool for creating good relationships. Honest and specific communication between the health care personnel, the next of kin, and the care receiver are necessary.

Situated on the north-eastern coast of Morocco, the Spanish enclave of Melilla is a paradigmatic case of an unusual yet increasingly common kind of community. These are small, rather isolated communities with no industry or natural resources of their own, which rely heavily on capital and labour drawn from outside. Together with Ceuta, Melilla is one of the two only land borders between Europe and Africa. The enclave’s economic and political set up reflects its geopolitical importance. Across the border from Melilla lies the Moroccan province of Nador, home to one of the largest communities of Moroccan emigrants in Europe and a steady source of unskilled labour on which the Spanish enclave relies. Connections across the border are strong, including kinship links, employment networks and a wide range of both legal and illegal commercial transactions. Based on twelve months of fieldwork conducted on both sides of the border, this thesis departs from prevailing images of the borderland as either an abstract space of ‘creolisation’ and ‘hybridity’ or a locus of resistance to state power, and suggests, instead, that we carefully consider the large-scale political and economic processes through which places like Melilla and Nador are produced, and analyse the ways in which such global structures shape local reality. A fundamental aim of the thesis, therefore, is to elucidate the nature of the relations between space, place and capital at the Spanish-Moroccan frontier, and understand how such relations affect the lives of those who inhabit the region. This involves thinking about the language of a ‘community’ and the discourses and practices of morality that sustain it; analysing discourses of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ in contexts of institutionalised economic inequality; and understanding local conceptions of identity, morality and legitimacy, and how the three interact.

La presente Tesis trata sobre el fenómeno social de la Informalidad como elemento característico de la dinámica económica de los Pequeños y Microempresas Textiles y de Confecciones de Prendas de Vestir en el Conglomerado Gamarra sito en el Distrito de la Victoria en la ciudad capital de Lima. Se pretende abordar de modo aproximado y general, los diversos componentes que concurren a la problemática del crecimiento de industria manufacturera local, cuya complejidad está expresada por su entroncamiento con la situación de la industria nacional y sus posibilidades de desarrollo, que indudablemente merecerían estudios e investigaciones interdisciplinarias con especialistas en Derecho, Economía y Sociología y otras, de mayor alcance. Las limitaciones en nuestra investigación, se sustenta en carecer de formación en Economía Industrial como de Sociología Cultural por la temática elegida, y nuestro modesto esfuerzo, se ha circunscrito en examinar a nuestro entender, el crecimiento significativo que ha tenido dicho Conglomerado Gamarra, aquel que se ha apoyado en una sistemática conducta de los Empresarios Pymes de efectuar sus actividades económicas al margen de la normatividad jurídica urgente aplicable a dicha actividad, y sin el marco jurídico que contribuye a su Promoción y/o desarrollo. Debemos mencionar también las dificultades comprensibles para acceder a la información actualizada de parte de las entidades públicas y privados vinculadas a dicho sector, por lo que hemos apelado a la mayor consulta de fuentes documentales, entrevistas así como trabajos de avances en diversos aspectos de dicha problemática, para la comprensión técnica respectiva, señalando entre otros la comparación de la situación de la Gran y Mediana Empresa Textil y de Confecciones de Prendas de Vestir en los últimos cinco años en relación con las Pymes del mismo sector y en particular con los ubicados en el Complejo Gamarra. Esperamos haber configurado según las conclusiones y recomendaciones algunos alcances para esclarecer la Compleja trama del pujante y fascinante mundo de las Pymes Gamarrinas.

The inhabitants of Kinshasa, who call themselves Kinois, deal with insecurity and violence on a daily basis. Cheating and thefts are commonplace, and pillaging by street gangs and robberies by armed thieves are everyday occurrences. The state infrastructure is so poorly regulated that deaths by accident or medical negligence are also common. This, and much more, contributes to a challenging social milieu within which the Kinois’ best hope is simply to ‘make do’. This thesis, based on extensive fieldwork in Kinshasa, analyses different forms of violence which affect the Kinois on a daily basis. I argue that the Kinois’ concept of violence, mobulu, differs from Western definitions, which define violence as an intrinsically negative and destructive force. Mobulu is for the Kinois a potentially constructive phenomenon, which allows them to build relationships, coping strategies and new social phenomena. Violence is perceived as a transformative force, through which people build meaningful lives in the face of the hardship of everyday life. Broadly speaking, this thesis contributes to the Anthropology of violence which has too often focused on how violence is imposed upon a population, often from a structural level of a state and its institutions. Such an approach fails to account for the nuances of alternate perspectives of what ‘violence’ is, as evidenced in this thesis through the prism of the Kinois term mobulu. The concept of mobulu highlights the creativity of those forced to ‘make do’ on the streets of Kinshasa, to negotiate not only every day physical needs, for food and shelter, but also to navigate the mystical violence of witchcraft. By exploring the coping mechanisms across all sections of society, I analyse how the Kinois not only have built their lives in the wake of the violence of the state, but they have also found means of empowerment within it, using mobulu as a springboard for the development of some social phenomena. Whereas the anthropology of violence has focused mainly on physical and material violence, this thesis also argues that mobulu in Kinshasa is a total social fact that combines state violence with everyday violence, and physical violence with the invisible violence of witchcraft. This thesis seeks to enrich discussions on witchcraft in Kinshasa and in the African context in general, by analysing in depth how the cosmology of Kinshasa has differentiated itself as a result of the politico-economic events of recent decades. As witchcraft and material insecurity go hand in hand, a detailed analysis of the mechanisms of witchcraft is necessary, if we are to grasp the complexity of the concept of mobulu and how material and invisible violence inform each other.

The continuum of care framework posits that individuals move from one level to the next in seeking resources for help ranging from first using informal support to finally using formal services. Yet, the literature is mostly focused on formal services. It is well-known in the literature that existing formal services are underutilized by the Asian American population. If that is also the case in nontraditional settlement cities like Richmond, Virginia, the continuum of care framework and existing literature suggest that Asian Americans are turning to their informal support networks to meet their needs. Thus far, the literature on informal support networks is very limited and a focus on Asian American communities is nonexistent. Furthermore, there is not an adequate theory to explain and predict this phenomenon. This study uses a grounded theory design to develop a testable theory that could further the understanding of informal support networks in the Asian American community. The theory posits that the Asian culture and community influence how individuals within the community seek help in times of need and, in turn, the helping process developed within the informal support network is a reinforcement of the Asian culture and community. When individuals have needs, they look to the informal support network and the network is developed in response to those needs. However, the informal support network is not able to meet all the needs of the Asian American community. At times, though infrequent, when the informal support network cannot meet the need, individuals are referred to mainstream services. Therefore, the informal support network serves as a gatekeeper to mainstream services. In addition, needs are rarely successfully met directly by mainstream services because of inaccessibility. Consequently, mainstream services provide infrequent help in meeting the needs of the Asian American community. It is important to comprehend how these developing communities in the new South are responding to their own needs. This understanding will allow mainstream services to extend formal systems of care and better partner with existing resources to effectively serve the increasing Asian American population in the South.

Correspondence physics competition of MFF UK - FYKOS - is extracurricular physical educational activity organized by university students for upper secondary school students. FYKOS is organized by Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague (MFF UK). FYKOS' main goals are: dissemination of physics, education of upper secondary school students, establishing conditions for creation of social bindings between participants (and organizers) and propagation of possibility of studies at MFF UK. This work is the first complete text about running of FYKOS and it is also the first systematical feedback from FYKOS' participants and FYKOS' organizers. The first part is a description of all FYKOS' activities (correspondence part, camps, FYKOSí Fyziklání and others). The second chapter includes an analysis of statistical survey of FYKOS' participants. Other chapters are dedicated to the description of gathering feedback and its interpretation. The feedback was made in several ways - interviews, web questionnaire and email questionnaire. Special attention was turned to study and professional development of former participants. Acquired knowledge lead up to formulation of possible improvements of FYKOS which are introduced in the last part of this theses. It was discovered that among respondents of...

This thesis is focused on the utilization of simplified functional equations in logarithm exercise. The goal of this work is to assess the degree of formalism in the logarithm knowledge of high school students. The first part attends to the origin and development on the term logarithm and logarithmic tables. These findings are subsequently put into the context of present day logarithm teaching extracted from contemporary high school textbooks. The second part describes an experiment which was conducted for the purpose of this thesis. The final part contains the results of the thesis and the evaluation of their relevance for logarithm tuition. Keywords: logarithm, logarithm tables, textbook analysis, functional equations.

L'occupation illégale de terrains dans les quebradas et la construction de véritables quartiers populaires en dehors de l'ordre établi, trouve leur point de départ dans une crise structurale d'identité du logement social à Valparaiso, Chili. On ne peut pas considérer ces actions, comme une réponse mécanique à une carence. Il s'agit d'un processus social, étroitement lié aux rapports entre les forces sociales ; où la caractéristique essentielle est d'avoir construit un milieu résidentiel « auto construit», dans l'illégalité. Par ailleurs, les quebradas comme unités territoriales et rémanentes naturelles se trouvent dans un processus constant d'occupation et de dégradation, puisqu'il n'existe pas de stratégies urbaines précises et particulières pour ce type d'environnement, en supposant qu'elles disparaîtront ainsi d'elles-mêmes, sans considérer les bénéfices qu'elles produisent pour toute la ville comme contrôleurs climatologiques. Alors dans ces conditions, quelles sont les valeurs propres des quebradas qui devront être prises en compte dans les approches futures d'urbanisation? Peuvent-elles être intégrées dans une planification urbaine particulière ? Les normes de construction en vigueur pourront être modifiées en poursuivant une intégration réelle à la ville et une administration intégrale de son patrimoine naturel? Pourront-elles devenir comme des parcs urbains qui incluent le logement social ? Nous parlerons de quebradas puisque l'usage courant à Valparaiso est d'utiliser ce terme pour désigner des petites vallées encaissées dès que l'on s'éloigne du la plaine littorale. / The illegal occupation of land in the quebradas, and the building of real neighborhoods outside the established order, find their point of departure in a structural crisis of identity of social housing in Valparaiso, Chile. It is impossible to consider these actions as a mechanical response to deficiency. It is a social process, closely linked to the relationship between the social forces, it's essential characteristic being the construction of residential self built neighborhoods, in total illegality. The quebradas as territorial and persistent natural units are in a proces of constant occupation and degradation, since there are no precise and specific urban strategies for this type of environment, assuming that they will disappear, without considering the benefits they produce for the whole city as climate controllers. Under these conditions, what are the values of the quebradas that should be taken into account in future approaches to urbanization? Can they be integrated into a special urban planning? May the current construction standards be modified by pursuing a real integration in the city and a full administration of its natural heritage? Will they become like urban parks that include social housing? We will talk about quebrada, since it is common in Valparaiso to use this term in reference to small valleys incised as soon as one moves away from the coastal plain.

v anglickém jazyce "The language of Spanish Insults" The objective of the present paper was to explore, as the title indicates, the rich variety of the Spanish insults. We centered mainly on the comparison of the Spanish insults to the Czech insults and observed the diferences and specific characteristics of Spanish insults. We began the first part with the definition of formal and informal language and its sociolects, because we believe that it helps to understand the properties of the insults, since they have many common characteristics with the sociolects. Afterwards, we tried to describe the historical and cultural backgrounds, because due to different evolutions in each country, the habits to use insults and curses are different, especially concerning the curses, which are still very common in Spain. In Czech Republic the curses fell into oblivion during the last century, while the people were becoming more atheistic. The role of taboo is also very important, because in each society, taboo is what's influencing the usage and the importance of every insult. Neverthless, the insults don't serve only for attacking somebody or to show disappointment, but they also have other functions, such as identifying with the members of the group or to address someone in a friendly way. In the practical part,...

The aim of this thesis is to describe the language of electronic communication ('netspeak') as one of the present trends of the development of English. The thesis is based on the hypothesis 'netspeak' represents an independent multimodal linguistic variety sharing some features with informal face-to-face conversation. For this purpose, the language of selected samples of the texts of English-speaking students of British universities obtained from the social network Facebook was studied. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of these data and their comparison with spoken form of standard English, namely with the spoken demographically sampled part of the British National Corpus, confirmed the hypothesis. ! Key words: netspeak, CMC, Facebook, emoticons, face-to-face communication, informal conversation