Bakgrund: Sedan december 2019 har ett nytt virus, som orsakar sjukdomen Covid-19, spridits världen över och för att minska smittspridning har restriktioner införts i samhället och vården. Detta innebär att partners inte får delta vid exempelvis besök på barnmorskemottagningar, ultraljud eller närvara på BB efter förlossningen. Partners delaktighet är viktig under graviditet och barnafödande för att främja föräldratransitionen och anknytningen till barnet, vilket försvårats under pandemin. Det är därför av vikt att undersöka partners upplevelse under Covid-19-pandemin. Syfte: Syftet var att belysa partners upplevelse av graviditet och barnafödande under Covid-19-pandemin. Metod: Studien genomfördes med kvalitativ innehållsanalys med induktiv ansats, där åtta partners intervjuades. Resultat: I resultatet framkom fyra kategorier som sedan mynnade ut i ett tema. Samtliga partners uppgav bristande delaktighet. Förstagångsföräldrarna upplevde en stark negativ påverkan av den bristande delaktigheten vilket resulterade i känslor av utanförskap och en svårighet att förverkliga graviditeten. Andragångsföräldrar upplevde en större trygghet i föräldraskapet vilket ökade förmågan att hantera den bristande delaktigheten. Konklusion: Beslutsfattare bör väga smittorisken mot de negativa effekterna som uppstår av restriktionerna. Det krävs förändringar för att främja partnerns delaktighet och motverka långsiktiga negativa konsekvenser på hälsan för partners och deras familjer. / Background: Since December 2019, a new virus, which causes Covid-19 disease, has spread around the world and to reduce the spread of infection, restrictions have been introduced in society and healthcare. This entails that partners are not allowed to participate in, for example; visits to midwife clinics, ultrasounds or attend BB postpartum. Partner participation during pregnancy and childbirth is important to promote the transition to parenthood and connection to the child, which is made more difficult during the pandemic. It is therefore important to examine partners' experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Aim: The aim was to illustrate the partners' experience of pregnancy and childbirth during the Covid-19 pandemic. Method: The study was conducted with a qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach. Eight partners were interviewed. Results: The results revealed four categories which then culminated in a theme. All partners stated a lack of participation. The first-time parents experienced a strong negative impact of the lack of participation, which resulted in feelings of exclusion and a difficulty in actualizing the pregnancy. Second-time parents experienced greater security in parenthood, which increased the ability to handle the lack of participation. Conclusion: Decision-makers should consider weigh the risk of infection against the negative effects of restrictions. Changes are needed to promote partner participation and counteract long-term negative health consequences for partners and their families.

<p>The present study predicted that gender, relationship status, sexual orientation, and sexual debut would have an impact on number of sexual partners, which would then affect self-esteem, sexual satisfaction, and sexual self-efficacy. Through an online survey, participants anonymously responded to statements related to these concepts in order to test relationships among demographics and the number of sexual partners as well as among the number of sexual partners and self-esteem, sexual satisfaction, and sexual self-efficacy. Overall, men were much more influenced by their relationship status and number of sexual partners than women, implying that the men are still affected by the sexual double standard through the praise they receive for having many sexual partners.</p>

Addressing environmental issues is becoming increasingly important for businesses and NGOs. In addition, through the internationalisation of these organisations, the problem is becoming global. To address environmental issues in an effective way, there is a need to form a cross-sector collaboration between NGOs and businesses. Thus, to have a successful collaboration, it is important to search for suitable partners. This thesis investigates the partner search process of NGOs for cross-sector collaboration. It investigates how the process of partner search with regard to drivers for collaboration, formation typology, success factors compatibility, resources, and capability, as well as trust affect the partner search of three NGOs with different internationalisation degrees. A literature review has been conducted to investigate what has been discussed regarding the key concepts: environment, internationalisation degree, partner search, formation, drivers, and success factors. The resulted conceptual framework is used to analyse the empirical data. The study was conducted following an abductive approach since existing literature is only existent on firm-perspective so far. To investigate the NGO´s partner search for potential business partners, the thesis follows qualitative research where semi-structured interviews were conducted to create three single cases. The cases represent three internationalisation degrees, namely local NGO, regional NGO, and international NGO. The analysis discusses the differences and similarities between the empirical findings and the theoretical findings. The conclusion suggests that the internationalisation degree influences the partner search process slightly in every key concept. This is mainly due to the interdependence between each concept, which challenges a clear distinction. Nevertheless, the main implication for theory is the contribution to the so-far missing NGO perspective on the partner search in cross-sector collaboration. This thesis also provides practical implications where it appeals for NGOs to clearly understand the intention of the business partner for the collaboration and build trust. The study concludes with limitations and future research implications.

Thesis (PhD. (Nursing Science)) --University of Limpopo, 2019 / The ability of professional nurses to support and motivate people living with HIV and AIDS to disclose to sexual partner continue to be a challenge based on the social, economic, psychological and ethical circumstances that surround the process to do so. A qualitative research study using semi-structured interviews with a schedule guide whereby probing questions were used to elicit more data. Two focus groups with 6 professional nurses were also conducted to explore and describe professional nurse’s knowledge and practices as they support People Living With HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) to disclose their positive status to sexual partners. The interviews were carried out in five (5) district hospitals of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Dickoff, James, and Wiedenbach (1968) practice theory guided the study. Study findings revealed that professional nurses do understand the concept but however it is difficult for them to translate and link learning and understanding in the clinical area. Social, economic, psychological and ethical dilemmas pose a challenge for professional nurses to support individuals to disclose to sexual partners. Professional nurses refer individuals with challenges to psychologists and social workers, but however, they do not receive referral back on the outcome. The absence of support groups and link with community-based groups to support PLHWA reduce efforts to improve knowledge on benefits of disclosure to communities led by PLHWA including reduction of stigma and discrimination associated with the diagnosis. The study therefore, recommends a training programme that links the South African Nursing Council statutes, including that of World Health Organization and Department of Health with teaching and learning methods that clarify and simulate real clinical situation to enhance the translation of this policy in the real-life situation. The training programme further suggests a link with community base structures led by PLWHA to enhance disclosure of HIV positive status to a sexual partner, reduction of stigma and discrimination associated with the diagnosis and reduce the incidence of HIV among people living with HIV. Key words: People living with HIV infection, Professional nurses, disclosure of HIV to sexual partners

Insects form close partnerships, or symbioses, with bacteria. These partnerships allow the insects to use resources that would be unavailable to them otherwise. Certain insects, hemipterans, are able to feed on nutrient-poor plant-sap because these bacteria supplement their diets. While this association is beneficial for both the insect and bacteria, it also comes with consequences: the genomes of bacterial symbionts typically undergo extreme degradation, becoming small and lacking many genes necessary for typical bacterial functioning. In the Hemiptera, aphids, mealybugs, cicadas, true bugs,and their relatives, these bacterial partnerships tend to be stable over millions of years. However, adelgids (Aphidoidea: Adelgidae) are highly unusual in that their symbiotic bacteria have been frequently replaced. These replacements offer a unique opportunity to explore the effects of symbiont role and age on symbiont genome degradation. My dissertation uses the pattern of adelgid symbiont gains and losses to understand the process of symbiont replacements and co-symbiont gain. I accomplished this by sequencing and annotating the genomes of adelgid symbionts from across the family, first focusing on the symbionts from a pest species, then expanding to representatives from across the family, and finally conducting an in-depth exploration of how the genomes of a symbiont found in two branches of the adelgids varies between species. Through this work I demonstrate that adelgid symbionts are nutritional providers, they have a unique pattern for distributing the work of providing nutrients between the symbiont pairs, and that a symbiont’s precedence, whether it was there first or whether it joined another symbiont, has an impact on genome degradation.

L’objectif des travaux relatés dans ce manuscrit est de proposer une méthodologie qui garantit une réduction du nombre de critères de sélection de partenaires à utiliser (donc de ressources à consommer), tout en permettant de choisir les critères les plus représentatifs pour l’utilisateur. L’ensemble des critères ainsi choisi par l’utilisateur à travers un paramètre de contrôle, n’influence pas le classement des partenaires potentiels ou s’il l’influence, celle-ci est maîtrisée et connue par l’utilisateur. La méthodologie s’appuie sur une structuration de critères faisant appel à la notion de distance causale ou sémantique. Pour ce faire, les algorithmes de « Dijkstra » et de Classification Ascendante Hiérarchique (CAH) ont été utilisés de manière successive. Cette démarche de structuration est appliquée à un ensemble de 101 critères de sélection. Les résultats sont interprétés afin d’en démontrer la portée dans le processus de recherche de partenaires / The objective of the research performed here is to propose a methodology that guarantees a reduction in the number of criteria for selecting partners to use (i.e. reduction of resource consumption) while allowing to choose the most representative criteria for users. The set of criteria chosen in this way does not influence the ranking of potential partners at all, or the influence is mastered and known by the user who has to interact with the algorithm. The methodology looks structuring criteria using the causal or semantic distance. To achieve this, the algorithms of "Dijkstra" and Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) have been used in sequence. This structuring is applied to a set of 101 criteria. The results are interpreted to demonstrate how the selection process can be optimized for a given usage scenario

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Long-term psychosocial consequences of breast cancer are increasingly more important to study as survivors are living longer. However, the survivors do not experience cancer alone; their significant others often suffer just as much if not more than the survivors themselves. In this dissertation, we explore some long-term consequences of cancer within the context of the Social Cognitive Processing Theory (SCPT). SCPT proposes that an individual must be able to discuss their feelings in order to cognitively process a traumatic event, such as cancer. If discussions are hindered, in particular by a significant other, then one will be unable to work through his/her concerns, leading to poor psychological outcomes, such as depression and fear of recurrence. The purpose of this dissertation is to use SCPT to identify causal mechanisms of depressive symptoms and fear of recurrence using a large sample of young breast cancer survivors and their partners. For one paper, we also included a large set of older participants for comparison. This dissertation is divided into three distinct articles. Each article tests long-term consequences of breast cancer and its treatment on breast cancer survivors and their partners using SCPT to explain relationships. First we examine the hypothesized predictors of younger breast cancer survivors’ depressive symptoms including the partner variable of depressive symptoms. The second article addresses the partners by predicting their depressive symptoms using SCPT. The third and final article seeks to identify the relationship of predictors and FOR on both survivors and their partners again using SCPT. For survivors, structural equation modeling analyses found significant direct and indirect paths between depressive symptoms and theoretical variables, including social constraints (stb=.266, p<.001) and intrusive thoughts (stb=.453, p<.001). In partners, cognitive processing variables (intrusive thoughts and cognitive avoidance) mediated the relationship between social constraints and depressive symptoms (F(5,498)= 19.385, R2=.163, p<.001). And finally, cognitive processing mediated the relationship between social constraints and fear of recurrence both for survivors [F(3,213)= 47.541, R2=.401, p<.001] and partners [F(3,215)= 27.917, R2=.280, p<.001). The evidence from these studies supports the use of SCPT in predicting depressive symptoms and fear of recurrence in both long-term survivors and partners.

For least developing countries with large rural population living in severe poverty such as Ethiopia, access to modern and sustainable energy services is a real challenge. Dealing with the lack of modern energy services at local level and the needs for economic development at national level is a major challenge in the policy and decision making process. This particular study takes the case of Ethiopia to investigate the existing challenges and future prospects of mainstreaming sustainable energy access into the country’s development planning process, and the consequences for international development financiers, national policy makers, private actors and local energy planners and experts. The roles and approaches of various developmental agencies are reviewed based on the effectiveness and sustainability of cooperation models with governmental institutions. To this end, this study establishes an understanding of institutional, financial and policy elements related to both state and non-state actors. Accordingly, readiness of the rural energy sector to adopt sector–perspective and national development approaches to mainstream sustainable energy access is investigated. The thesis emphasizes the need for all stakeholders to cooperate and take advantage of local potentials and external opportunities in light of the new momentum for sustainable energy access in the global agenda.

Increasing pressure on schools to continually increase levels of academic performance has caused valuable career/technical education programs to be sacrificed. These programs are important as they not only help keep students engaged in school, but train them for the workforce, at a time when the United States is facing a serious skilled-worker crisis. This study examined the perceptions of business professionals as advisory members and their role and motivation for participation on ROC/P advisory committees in San Joaquin County. It also examined ROC/P educator perceptions about business professionals' role and motivation for participation on ROC/P advisory committees. Responses of both groups were analyzed as they related to eight specific research questions. The study group consisted of 59 business partners and 39 ROC/P educators from various industry advisory groups. Each participant completed a 20 item survey especially designed for this study. Participants also responded to several demographic-type questions. The results of both groups were analyzed and compared. Although there was a tendency toward agreement on most of the survey items between the business professionals and educators' responses, the results showed that there is still a need for better understanding and communication between education and business. Advisory committees are a mechanism by which education and business can come together to address issues of mutual concern, such as modifying curriculum to meet industry needs. Business professionals are not in full agreement that their recommendations are truly incorporated into the curriculum. This study recommends that educators focus more on assisting business professionals in understanding their role as advisory committee members, to communicate more clearly regarding recommended curriculum changes, and to increase the opportunities for mutually beneficial sharing.

Since the early 1980's there has been a heightened academic interest in the field of commitment, particularly as it relates to business relationships. Knowledge of commitment continues to advance and has begun splintering and applied into specific and narrow fields. The particular field of interest in this study surrounds commitment levels in business relationships within property and casualty insurance distribution networks. The intent of understanding and enhancing commitment levels is to allow stakeholders to explore new ways to improve profitability. This can be achieved by deepening the level of understanding and knowledge of relationship partners with a view to anticipating and fulfilling their needs better than the competition. However, commitment is intangible and involves many factors including human emotion. This increases the difficulty in comprehending the whole phenomenon of commitment. To assist in furthering the knowledge in this area, transaction cost theory is examined and applied to insurance company and broker relationships. In seeking a greater understanding of the underlying drivers of commitment, this thesis investigates the theoretical contribution of transaction cost economics theory in assessing commitment levels. The purpose is to utilize the elements of transaction costs as a means to extend the awareness of how commitment is constructed, and to search for ways to improve and strengthen these relationships. The primary research method consists of three major case studies within the Canadian property and casualty insurance distribution sector. The first case study explores the perspectives of insurance brokers in Ontario. The second study reveals the perceptions of relationship managers employed with ING Canada, the country's largest property and casualty insurance company. Lastly, the research incorporates a series of interviews with ING Canada senior executives to capture their perspectives and validate the research findings from the first two case studies. These investigations into the Canadian insurance industry have provided several outputs, chief among them is the development of a conceptual model referred to as the 'Commitment Wheel'. This model has the advantages of seating affective and calculative commitment at the centre of a moving environment of commitment enablers.