Cultural, social, personal and psychological factors were identified by Rani (2014) as the four major influences on consumer’s buying behavior. While There are many studies about the personal values and consumer purchase behavior, but there is very little research to study Africa women’ consumer behavior, and in Zambia there is even less studies which are conducted to analyze their women’ values and their consumer decision-making styles. The purpose of this study is to explore Zambian women’ personal values and their consumption decision-making styles and how personal values influence their consumer decision-making styles in the context of human hair extension products. It is very important to analyze the consumer values of Zambia women and their consumer decision-making styles in the context of human hair extension, because the demand for hair extension in Zambia is growing fast and the hair extension has become a muti-billion dollars industry This paper had reviewed literature regarding consumer behavior, in specifically personal values and consumer decision-making styles. The LOV scale proposed by Kahle (1983) and the Consumer’s decision making styles proposed by Sproles and Kendall (1986) were adopted to analyze the inter relationship through methodology of multiple regression. The author conducted a descriptive analysis of the primary data collected by a field survey of research questionnaire toward Zambian women. All the questionnaires are distributed and collected at the main shopping malls and universities in Lusaka, Zambia. Through a series analysis of the sample by SPSS, the paper had detected all the list of values and decision-making styles of Zambian women. There are only two consumer values namely Security related with physical and financial safety and Self-fulfillment related with achievement of consumption which achieved a reasonable degree of reliability, and the consumer decision-making styles of Confused by Over-choice related with lacking ability of information analysis and Novelty-Fashion Consciousness related up-to-date fashion pursuit achieved a reasonable degree of reliability. The results reveal that the higher the value of Security, the greater the adoption of Novelty-Fashion Consciousness, and the higher the value of Self-fulfillment, the greater the adoption of Confused by Over-choice Decision-making Styles. However the Security value does not have any significant impact on the adoption of Confused by Over-choice Decision-making styles and the effect of Self-fulfilment value on Novelty-Fashion Consciousness is not significant.

A presente pesquisa destina-se a mostrar o funcionamento de um grupo de discussão via internet denominado \"Lista Provisória dos participantes da Lista de Discussão do programa \'Sua escola a 2000 por hora\'\", por meio do estudo das mensagens trocadas entre os seus componentes. O corpus vem de uma lista educacional ativa, fechada e moderada \"de leve\". Acredito que o ensino por meio de projetos de aprendizagem, onde o aluno atua como protagonista é fundamental para a melhoria da qualidade do ensino. Essa é a filosofia que norteia os projetos sociais do Instituto Ayrton Senna, e é denominada \"Educação para o desenvolvimento humano\". As investigações mostram que as conversações polilógicas (compostas por múltiplos participantes) são mais conflituosas. Assim, acompanhar uma discussão torna-se uma tarefa muito complexa, pois surgem diversos \"fios de conversa\" e é necessário que o usuário faça, mentalmente, as ligações coesivas entre os enunciados de um mesmo fio. Uma das questões fundamentais da pesquisa é a discussão sobre conversação eletrônica, em comparação com a conversação natural. Para entender melhor esse conceito, recorro à teoria da Análise da conversação e verifico quais elementos básicos para que a interação verbal se efetive, seja ela uma comunicação mediada ou não. Outra questão que se coloca, partindo-se da noção bakhtiniana de esfera comunicativa, é a questão dos gêneros textuais emergentes na tecnologia digital. Entendendo-se a web como esfera eletrônica, um espaço de práticas humanas de comunicação, acompanho alguns pensadores que acreditam que ela originará muitos gêneros para organizar as práticas linguajeiras ocorridas nesse espaço. Lista de discussão é um desses gêneros. Atenção especial é dada ao conceito de coesão semântica, como elemento indispensável para o entendimento do fluxo aparentemente caótico de mensagens enviadas ao grupo. Por meio desses elementos construo as teias (conjunto autônomo de fios discursivos dentro da atividade da lista), estabelecendo o subcorpus. / This research aims to show how does an internet discussion group named \"Lista provisória dos participantes da Lista de Discussão do programa \'Sua escola a 2000 por hora\'\" work, studying the messages exchanged by its components. The corpus comes from an active, private and loosely moderated scholar list. I believe that education by learning projects, whereby the student has the main role, is fundamental for the the improvement of the quality of learning. This is the philosophy that guides the social projects of the Instituto Ayrton Senna, and is named \"Education for human development\". The investigation showed that polylogical conversations (composed of multiple participants) are more conflictive. Thus, it is a very complex task to follow up a discussion, because diverse threads come out and it is necessary for the user to mentally make the cohesive links between the headers of a same thread. One of the fundamental issues of the research is the discussion concerning electronic conversation, in comparison to the natural one. In order to better understand this concept, I turned to the Conversation Analysis Theory and verify which are the basic elements for verbal interaction to occur, be it a mediated communication or not. Another issue that arises, departing from the bakhtinian notion of the communicative sphere, is the matter of the emergent textual genre in digital technology. Understanding the web as an electronic sphere, a space of human practices for communication, I follow some intellectuals that believe that it will bring about many genres to organize the language practices that took part in this space. The discussion list is one of those genres. Special attention is paid to the concept of semantic cohesion, as an essential element for the comprehension of the apparently chaotic flux of messages sent to the group. By those elements I assemble the web (autonomic cluster of discursive threads within the list activity), establishing the subcorpus.

The diploma thesis is focused on the issue of teaching semantics to elementary school students from 6th to 9th grade. The theoretical part consists of organizing existing notes about the theory of word meaning, explaining the basic terminology and describing the inner relationships between words. The main focus is on the didactic aspect of teaching semantics and how it is implemented in the contemporary textbooks of the Czech language. In the practical part, the main goal is to create an exhaustive learning materials for the students from the 6th to 9th grade (methodical papers, worksheets, presentations) which can be used for teaching the word meaning at school.

An increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome and obesity has been linked to the rise in transplant indication for cryptogenic cirrhosis and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), creating a growing challenge to public health. NAFLD liver transplant (LT) candidates are listed with low priority, and their waiting mortality is high. The impact of community/geographic factors on donor risk models is unknown. The purpose of this study was to develop a parsimonious donor risk-adjusted model tailored to NAFLD recipients by assessing the impact of donor, recipient, transplant, and external factors on graft survival. The theoretical framework was the social ecological model. Secondary data were collected from 3,165 consecutive recipients from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients and Community Health Scores, a proxy of community health disparities derived from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's community health rankings. Data were examined using univariate and multivariate analyses. The donor risk-adjusted model was developed using donor-only factors and supplemented with recipient and transplant factors, classifying donors as low, medium, and high risk. NAFLD residents in high-risk counties had increased likelihood of liver graft failure. Findings may be used to allocate high-risk donors to a subset of NAFLD with excellent outcomes, increasing the donor pool and decreasing mortality on the wait list.

There are many combinatorial optimization problems such as traveling salesman problem, quadratic-assignment problem, flow shop scheduling, that are computationally intractable. Tabu search based simulated annealing is a stochastic search algorithm that is widely used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. Due to excessive run time, there is a strong demand for a parallel version that can be applied to any problem with minimal modifications. Existing advanced and/or parallel versions of tabu search algorithms are specific to the problem at hand. This leads to a drawback of optimization only for that particular problem. In this work, we propose a parallel version of tabu search based SA on the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) platform. We propose two variants of the algorithm based on where the tabu list is stored (global vs. local). In the first version, the list is stored in the global shared memory such that all threads can access this list. Multiple random walks in solution space are carried out. Each walk avoids the moves made in rest of the walks due to their access to global tabu list at the expense of more time. In the second version, the list is stored at the block level and is shared by only the block threads. Groups of random walks are performed in parallel and a walk in a group avoids the moves made by the rest of the walks within that group due to their access to shared local tabu list. This version is better than the first version in terms of execution time. On the other hand, the first version finds the global optima more often. We present experimental results for six difficult optimization functions with known global optima. Compared to the CPU implementation with similar workload, the proposed GPU versions are faster by approximately three orders of magnitude and often find the global optima.

Thesis (M.Pharm. (Pharmacy Practice))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

This paper presents the findings of two independent studies which examined the test-retest reliability and the fall-off effects of the Munich Life Event List (MEL). The MEL is a three-step interview procedure for assessing life incidents which focusses on recognition processes rather than free recall. In a reliability study, test–retest coefficients of the MEL, based on a sample of 42 subjects, were quite stable over a 6-week interval. Stability for severe incidents appeared to be higher than for the less severe ones. In the fall-off study, a total rate of 30% fall-off was noted for all incidents reported retrospectively over an 8-year period. A more detailed analysis revealed average monthly fall-off effects of 0.36%. The size of fall-off effects was higher for non-severe and positive incidents than for severe incidents. This was particularly evident for the symptomatic groups. Non-symptomatic males reported a higheroverall number of life incidents than females. This was partly due to more frequent reporting of severe incidents. The findings of the fall-off study do not support the common belief that the reliability oflife incident report is much worse when the assessment period is extended over a period of several years as compared to the traditional 6-month period.

In this study, Hazardous Waste Production potential for the selected priority sectors in OSTIM Organized Industrial Zone (OIZ), Ankara is investigated. A general inventory study is conducted based on both absolute and minor entries in Waste List of Regulation on General Principles of Waste Management, Annex 4. Processes included in priority sectors are identified / moreover, each process is analyzed in terms of inputs entering and outputs leaving. Generated hazardous wastes from each sector are classified as process based, side processes based, and non-process based. After determination of codes and amounts of wastes, hazardous qwaste generation factors are generally calculated as &quot / kg of waste generated per ton of product or raw material processed&quot / . Calculated hazardous waste generation factors are compared with the estimated ones in literature if there is any and a specific range is determined for each waste factor. By use of sector specific hazardous waste generation factors and total capacity values sectoral hazardous waste generation amounts are calculated for OSTIM OIZ. The most crowded and potentially polluter sectors are determined from 14 main producer sectors of OSTIM OIZ. Accordingly, machining, casting of ferrous metals, treatment and coating of metals, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles and manufacture of rubber products are selected priority sectors studied in this thesis study. It is observed that among selected priority sectors highest generation occurs in machining sector, which involve high amounts of 12 01 coded HWs as metal grindings and waste oil mixtures. In addition, manufacturing of rubber products sector has no significant hazardous waste generation.

N-Nitrosamines are an emerging group of disinfection byproducts characterized by high carcinogenic risks at ng/L levels and by their frequent detection in water and wastewater treatment systems in the U.S. and other parts of the world. The overall goal of this research is to achieve a better understanding of the roles of common nitrosamine precursors in leading to N-nitrosamine formation in water and wastewater treatment systems. The specific objectives of this research are: (a) To probe the mechanisms of nitrosamine formation from commonly employed water treatment polymers, particularly polyDADMACs, during ozonation, (b) To evaluate the role of dithiocarbamate compounds as nitrosamine precursors in reaction with common water disinfection oxidants, and (c) To investigate the potential enhancement effect of activated carbons (AC) to promote transformation of amines to nitrosamines and identify the involved reaction mechanism. Results of this research show that, upon ozonation, polyDADMACs may yield N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) at levels up to two orders of magnitude higher than current advisory guidelines for NDMA. Radical pathways may be responsible for the degradation of the quaternary ammonium ring groups in polyDADMACs to release of dimethylamine (DMA). Detection of significant amounts of nitrite after ozonation of polyDADMACs and DMA suggests the potential role of nitrosation pathway in NDMA formation. Study results also reveal dithiocarbamates as potent nitrosamine precursors with significant nitrosamine yields upon ozonation and monochloramination. Identification and quantification of reaction products suggest nitrosation and chlorinated-UDMH oxidation as primary reaction mechanisms in nitrosamine formation from ozonation and monochloramination of dithiocarbamates compounds, respectively. This research also demonstrates that many commercial AC materials may catalyze transformation of secondary amines to yield trace levels of N-nitrosamines under ambient aerobic conditions. This is a novel discovery with far-reaching implications because of the widespread usage of AC materials in numerous analytical and environmental applications. The study results show that the properties of AC materials and reaction conditions play a crucial role in the catalyzed nitrosamine formation and should be carefully selected to minimize analytical errors and undesirable nitrosamine formation in water samples. Overall, the mechanistic information obtained in this research will be useful for the water industry and research communities to develop more effective strategies to control undesirable nitrosamine formation in water and wastewater treatment systems and thus better protect the public health.

Modern communication systems demand ever-increasing data rates. Meeting this increased demand is not easy due to regulation and fundamental physical constraints. The utilization of more than one antenna at both the transmitter and receiver produces a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel, thereby enabling (under certain channel conditions) increased data rates without the need for increased bandwidth or transmission power. Concurrent with this increase in bandwidth is an increase in the receiver's computational complexity which, for a brute-force detector, increases exponentially. For receivers that possess error correcting capabilities, the problem of constructing a detector with low computational complexity that allows for near-exact a posteriori detection is challenging for transmission schemes employing even a modest number of transmit antennas and modulation alphabet sizes. The focus of this dissertation is on the construction of MIMO detection algorithms with low and fixed computational complexity. Specifically, the detection algorithms in this dissertation generate a list of potential transmission vectors resulting in realizable communication receivers with low and fixed computational complexity combined with low error rate performance in both coded and uncoded systems. A key contribution in this dissertation is a breadth-first fixed-complexity algorithm known as the smart-ordered and candidate-adding algorithm that achieves a desirable performance-complexity tradeoff. This algorithm requires only a single pass of a search tree to find its list of transmission vectors. We then construct a framework within which we classify a large class of breadth-first detection algorithms. The design of receiver algorithms for MIMO systems employing space-time codes and error correction is an important area of study. In this dissertation we propose a low and fixed computational complexity algorithm for an increasingly significant algebraic space-time code known as the golden code. The notion of computational complexity is critical in the design of practical MIMO receivers. We provide an analysis of computational complexity in relation to list-based soft-output detection where, in some instances, bounds are placed on the computational complexity of MIMO detection. For this analysis we utilize a metric known as the number of branch metric computations. The value at which the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of conditional probabilities for a transmitted bit being either a 1 or a 0 is 'clipped' has an impact on a system's error rate performance. We propose a new approach for determining LLR clipping levels that, in contrast to prior approaches which clip to a predetermined fixed LLR clipping level, exploits channel state information to improve the error rate performance of suboptimal detection algorithms. Orthogonal frequency-division (OFDM) multiplexing is an effective technique for combating frequency-selective wideband communication channels. It is common practice for MIMO-OFDM detectors to implement the same detector at each subcarrier, in which case the overall performance is dominated by the weakest subcarrier. We propose a hard-output list detection receiver strategy for MIMO-OFDM channels called nonuniform computational complexity allocation, whereby the receiver adapts the computational resources of the MIMO detector at each subcarrier to match a metric of the corresponding channel quality. The proposed nonuniform algorithm improves performance over uniform allocation.