The aim of the study was to describe what it's like to live with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and experiences of social support and being received and met by health personnel. The method was a qualitative interview study of descriptive design and was analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Three women and two men (26-75 years) with MS from two municipalitiesin central Sweden participated in the study. The main results showed that the participants felt the disease limited everyday life. The majority described feelings of injustice being affectedby the illness, but they now have a new perspective on life. Participants described lack of information and communication from health personnel. All felt there is a long wait to get appointments in specialist care and says it depends on too few staff. Participants felt that being received and met by health personnel have been good, some describes that lack of time and staff may influence the response from health personnel negatively. The conclusion was that the participants daily life was limited by the disease in various extent and could lead to strong feelings. Several felt they learned to live with the disease because of a positive attitude and persistence. Participants felt it was important to get information, rehabilitation, and that health personnel listened. However, the participants experienced long wait to get access to specialist care, and that the main support they got from there was through telephone contact.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the moderator role of different types of social support (perceived vs. received) on the relationship between stress and health outcomes (depression, anxiety, and physical health) among the Turkish freshmen university students (with internal vs. external locus of control). In order to measure received social support, The Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors (ISSB) (Barrera, Sandler, &amp / Ramsay, 1981), was adapted into Turkish culture in Study 1 by using Middle East Technical University (METU) students from various departments. The sample of Study 2 consisted of 224 METU freshman students from several departments. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses were conducted with perceived/received social support and stress (frequency, intensity, general) as independent variables and depression, anxiety, and general physical health problems as dependent variables for internal locus of control and external locus of control students separately. The findings suggested that for both internals and externals, stress intensity, stress frequency, and general stress predicted depression, anxiety, and general physical health problems for both perceived and received social support. Different patterns of relationships were found among perceived/received social support, stress (frequency, intensity, general), and the outcome variables (depression, anxiety, general physical health problems) for internal locus of control and external locus of control students. The findings and strengths as well as the limitations of the study were discussed.

In response to the presence of health disparities among a diverse population of older adults, creating culturally competent health care services has emerged as a possible method to help reduce and eventually eliminate inequalities in health care. However, little information exists concerning the effectiveness of cultural competence, and even less is known about how culturally competent clients perceive their providers to be. This dissertation examined a number of indicators related to cultural competence, including the predictors of client-provider racial/ethnic concordance, client perceptions of the interpersonal sensitivity of their health care providers, and the overall satisfaction with care reported by older Non-Hispanic White, African American/Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian American adults. In order to accomplish these aims, three related studies were conducted, all drawing on data from the Commonwealth Fund 2001 Health Care Quality Survey. The first study focused on the factors that predicted racial/ethnic concordance between clients and their health care providers. The second study examined several factors that can affect the clients’ perception of their providers’ interpersonal sensitivity, including client-provider racial/ethnic concordance. The third and final analysis utilized the outcome variables from the two previous studies, in addition to the client-level variables, to determine which factors predicted satisfaction with care received. The results show that the factors that predicted client-provider racial/ethnic concordance and perceived interpersonal sensitivity varied across the four groups. In addition, perceived interpersonal sensitivity was a significant predictor of satisfaction with care for all four of the groups. The findings from this dissertation contribute to a broader understanding of racial/ethnic differences in client-provider racial/ethnic concordance, perceptions of interpersonal sensitivity, and overall satisfaction with care among older adults from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds.

This thesis examines the relationship between received remittances and education using random samples from panel survey data from households in rural Malawi collected between 2008 and 2010. Past research as well as that conducted in this paper point to the fact that remittances and education share an important correlation. The results of this study indicate that on a microeconomic level, remittances have a highly significant and positive impact on household education. Other remittance-related factors such as the distance from agent, the remittance amount, and the type of account held by an individual also have a significant impact on the highest level of education attained by an individual, whereas the account type, age, gender, and marital status are important determinants in the probability of an individual ever having attended school. The results from this study raise questions as to whether the “brain drain” can actually have a positive impact on developing nations. The study also discusses policy implications for money transfer operators in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The name of this thesis is Municipal Revenue Prediction. Income communities or their revenue capacity, are an important factor landlord and also subject to financial decision-making communities. The aim is to propose a procedure for determining the revenue capacity of the municipality and its revenue prediction process. The first part is focused on defining the basic concepts related to this issue.V methodological section describes the methods and procedures which are then used in next part.Practical part is focused both on the village Rudolfov compared with a selected sample villages, and on the actual prediction selected tax revenue. At the very predictions are then created different scenarios, which significantly affects the level of income of the municipality.

In 1959, approximately 20 km to the north-west of České Budějovice a construction of a chemical uranium ore plant MAPE began. The plant operation started in 1962 and finished in 1991. The premises of the former chemical plant MAPE Mydlovary consisted of a plant in which uranium ore was manufactured and the manufactured material from uranium mines was stored in adjacent sludge lagoons. Uranium ore has never been mined in this area, neither in its surroundings. It has always been imported from uranium mines. Uranium was made from the ores by either acid or alkali leaching. Although this former uranium ore plant MAPE Mydlovary hasn´t been economically active anymore, it is nowadays one of the biggest environmental burden which results from ore mining and it's processing in the Czech Republic. Therefore, it is important to carry out remediation and recultivation works which are currently provided by the state enterprise DIAMO. DIAMO company, in fact, is also the owner of the former plant MAPE Mydlovary. During the operation of the former ore plant MAPE Mydlovary, about 1,100 employees took turns in the company. During the uranium ore treating and its consequent waste store in the lunge lagoons, employees of the plant were exposed to the effect of radionuclides. For this reason, my diploma thesis deals with the effect of radiation on employees of the former chemical plant MAPE Mydlovary and aims at the doses which the employees received while working in the plant. The data were gathered from October 2013 to April 2014 and contain figures for a period of 1963-1996. These figures were gained from personal dosimetrical files of the employees and these files were provided by the state enterprise DIAMO. The first aim of the thesis was to monitor the rate of radiation and to compare the gained values among individual employees of the plant MAPE Mydlovary. The monitoring of the effect of radiation was carried out from personal files of the employees and the measured values were put into tables of Excel programme. The values were then compared and I also used descriptive figures statistics. The doses at the employees were found not to exceed any dose limits. The second aim of the thesis was to evaluate the measured values at several groups of employees according to the type of the work they do. The division into individual groups was carried out according to the scale of received doses. It deals with a group of employees who worked at least for 6 months with dustiness, another group working in a sludge lagoon, another group of workers who were responsible for the main manufacture but weren´t exposed to any dustiness (according to the type of work, these people were then divided either into the first or the second sub-group) and also a group of other employees who had their own dosimeter- this group served as a comparative reference in a statistic research. The measures values were evaluated by a statistic research. For this type of research, we used a parametric testing and a so-called Fischer´s F-test, which was applied thanks the Statistics function in a table processor MS Excel 2010. For this test, we used the level of significance = 0,05. Through the statistic research, we have found out that the highest measured values appeared at the employees who were working in the main manufacture but without any dustiness. This group of people was ranked as the first group. The lowest amount of received doses appeared at the employees who worked in the main manufacture, without any dustiness and were put into the second sub-group. The hypothesis that the doses of the MAPE Mydlovary employees are different within the groups has been confirmed. The hypothesis that the doses at the MAPE Mydlovary staff didn´t exceed any dose limits for the staff has been confirmed as well. The hypothesis that the doses at the MAPE Mydlovary staff were different in certain groups was confirmed.

Drawing on some 30 years’ experience in the UK and Central Europe, the author offers four assertions, three about education generally and the fourth that of the title. There the case is argued that statistics is a branch of logic, and therefore should be taught by experts in such subjects as philosophy and law and not exclusively by athematicians. Education in both Statistics and these other subjects would profit in consequence.

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Yes / A subsurface chamber transceiver system and associated propagation channel link budget considerations for an underground wireless sensor system (UWSS) are presented: the application was a sewerage system for a water utility company. The UWSS operates over the GSM850/900, GSM1800/1900 and UMTS bands in order to operate with the standard public mobile phone system. A novel antenna was developed to minimize path loss from the underground location: a folded loop type, which is small enough to fit conveniently inside a utility manhole access chamber while giving adequate signal strength to link to mobile base stations from such a challenging environment. The electromagnetic performance was simulated and measured in both free space and in a real manhole chamber. An experimental test bed was created to determine the return loss and received signal strength with different transceiver positions below the manhole chamber access cover. Both numerical and experimental results suggested an optimum position of the unit inside the manhole, combining easy access for maintenance with viable received signal strength. This confirmed that the characteristics were adequate for incorporation in a transceiver designed to communicate with mobile base stations from underground. A field trial confirmed the successful operation of the system under severe conditions. / This work was supported partially by Yorkshire Innovation Fund, IETG Ltd. Contract, Research Development Project (RDP) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424.

Network lifetime is an important performance metric in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Transmission Power Control (TPC) is a well-established method to minimise energy consumption in transmission in order to extend node lifetime and, consequently, lead to solutions that help extend network lifetime. The accurate lifetime estimation of sensor nodes is useful for routing to make more energy-efficient decisions and prolong lifetime. This research proposes an Energy-Efficient TPC (EETPC) mechanism using the measured Received Signal Strength (RSS) to calculate the ideal transmission power. This includes the investigation of the impact factors on RSS, such as distance, height above ground, multipath environment, the capability of node, noise and interference, and temperature. Furthermore, a Dynamic Node Lifetime Estimation (DNLE) technique for WSNs is also presented, including the impact factors on node lifetime, such as battery type, model, brand, self-discharge, discharge rate, age, charge cycles, and temperature. In addition, an Energy-Efficient and Lifetime Aware Routing (EELAR) algorithm is designed and developed for prolonging network lifetime in multihop WSNs. The proposed routing algorithm includes transmission power and lifetime metrics for path selection in addition to the Expected Transmission Count (ETX) metric. Both simulation and real hardware testbed experiments are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. The simulation experiments run on the AVRORA simulator for two hardware platforms: Mica2 and MicaZ. The testbed experiments run on two real hardware platforms: the N740 NanoSensor and Mica2. The corresponding implementations are on two operating systems: Contiki and TinyOS. The proposed TPC mechanism covers those investigated factors and gives an overall performance better than the existing techniques, i.e. it gives lower packet loss and power consumption rates, while delays do not significantly increase. It can be applied for single-hop with multihoming and multihop networks. Using the DNLE technique, node lifetime can be predicted more accurately, which can be applied for both static and dynamic loads. EELAR gives the best performance on packet loss rate, average node lifetime and network lifetime compared to the other algorithms and no significant difference is found between each algorithm with the packet delay.