La naturaleza potencialmente anticompetitiva de las prácticas impartidas desde las organizaciones de profesionales ha sido racionalizada por la literatura económica y ha ocupado un lugar no menor en la agenda de los organismos de defensa de la competencia. Sin embargo, la economía empírica carece de estudios sobre el ejercicio profesional autorregulado. Este trabajo relaciona los mercados de servicios profesionales con los modelos de diferenciación vertical y emplea un modelo Logit Mixto para evaluar la conducta del desempeño médico en Argentina. La evidencia hallada sugiere la existencia de algún acuerdo de precios. / The potentially anticompetitive nature of some practices driven by professional organizations has been approached in economic literature and appears as an important issue in the antitrust organism's agenda. However, empirical economics lacks of a self-regulated professionals analysis. This work relates the market for professional services with vertical product differentiation models and uses a Mixed Logit model to assess the medical profession behavior in Argentina. The evidence suggests the existence of a price arrangement. / Tesis de la Maestría en Economía, bajo la dirección de Fernando Navajas, de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

As a result of the interactive nature of modern programming languages the perception has developed that proper planning of a solution, reasoned action during the process of problem solving and evaluation of the solution have become less important during computer programming. Learn often rely on the programming language to help them solve a problem, without themselves planning the solution beforehand and then using a computer language to implement the solution. This approach usually leads to using bad programming techniques, resulting in unstructured programmes or rendering the learner unable to solve the problem. The importance of continuous reflection by learners while doing a programming activity has been advocated for quite some time... / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) have academic deficits that affect their success in school; however, few researchers have investigated what strategies work best for this population, especially in the area of writing. One promising intervention to support the writing skills of students with and at-risk for E/BD is self-regulated strategy development (SRSD). SRSD is a six-stage, explicit strategy instruction model that includes procedures for goal setting, self-monitoring, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement and can be generalized to a variety of writing tasks. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an SRSD persuasive writing intervention on the writing achievement of 44 students in a residential school. Results of a piecewise hierarchical linear modeling growth curve analysis suggest statistically significant gains were made over the course of the intervention in writing (quality, correct word sequences, and essay elements) and academic engagement. Effects also generalized to writing achievement measures. In addition, teachers implemented the intervention with high fidelity, and both students and teachers rated the intervention as socially acceptable, with higher ratings postintervention.

Formål:Hensikten med studien er å undersøke hvilken effekt det lovbaserte legefordelingssystemet, som var aktivt i Norge fra 1.1.1999 til 30.6.2013, har hatt, og hvordan ordningen har påvirket utviklingen i legestillinger i primærhelsetjenesten og spesialisthelsetjenesten i Norge. Studien kan gi myndighetene et bedre kunnskapsgrunnlag om statlig regulering av legestillinger. Metode: Forskningsspørsmålene er i hovedsak belyst gjennom kvantitative deskriptive analyser av registerdata og tilgjengelig statistikk. Saksdokumenter og vedtak om tildeling av legestillinger er gjennomgått, og det er gjennomført en kvalitativ analyse av bakgrunnsdokumentene ved innføringen av ordningen. Den teoretiske rammen for studien er folkehelsearbeid, organisasjonsteori og resultatkjeden som et styringsverktøy ved gjennomføring av evalueringer. Resultat: Studienviser at nye legestillinger i primærhelsetjenesten har vært prioritert i hele perioden. Dette kan ha bidratt til å redusere sosiale ulikheter i helse. Antall ubesatte legestillinger er i perioden 1.1.1999 til 30.6.2013 redusert til under 1% av alle legestillinger, både i primærhelsetjenesten og spesialisthelsetjenesten. I samme periode økte antall utdanningsstillinger for leger i spesialisering med 36%. I alt 54% av alle nye legestillinger i spesialisthelsetjenesten er gitt innen nasjonale satsningsområder og prioriterte spesialiteter. Av de nordiske landene har Norge hatt høyest økningen i legedekning pr 1000 innbyggere i allmennlegetjenesten. Konklusjon: Studien viser at den statligereguleringenav nye legestillinger har hatt en effekt, og at et målrettet reguleringssystem kan være et godt administrativt virkemiddel for nasjonal legefordeling og geografisk fordeling av leger. God forankring og bred deltaking er suksesskriterier. / Purpose: This study aimedto investigate the effect of the legally based system for allocating new positions for physiciansunder a policy that wasin effectin Norway between 1 January 1999 and 30 June 2013.The study also aimed to increase understanding of a government-regulated physician distribution system. Method: The primary methodology involved using quantitative descriptive analysis to review registry data and available statistics. Case documents and decisions related to theallocation of physician positions, and case and policy documents related to the original justification for the government-regulated physician distribution systemw ere also reviewed. The theoretical thesis and framework for this study is public health, organization theory, and the "result chain" as a management tool for executing evaluations and deliberations. Result: Theresults of the study show that vacant positions for physicians, both primary and specialists, decreased to less than 1% during the study period. During this same time period, 54% of all new hospital positions were assigned a priority specialty. Positions for specialist education increased 36%. Among the Nordic countries, Norway had the highest increase in coverage by primary care physiciansper 1,000 capita during the past 15 years. Conclusion:The government-regulated physician distribution systemin Norway has been effective. Robustness, consensus building, and broad participation are key conditions and ingredients in the recipe for success. / <p>ISBN 978-91-982282-2-9</p>

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between active procrastination, self-regulated learning and academic achievement. Participants included 108 undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year elective course at a Canadian university. Students reported their level of active procrastination, cognitive and metacognitive strategy use, self-efficacy for learning and performance, goal quality and self-reported goal attainment over the semester. Measures included the self-report Active Procrastination Scale (APS; Choi & Moran, 2009), the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991) and weekly reflections. Findings revealed: (a) active procrastination was significantly positively related to academic achievement, (b) the ability to meet deadlines was the component of active procrastination most related to SRL variables, and (c) self-reported goal attainment accounted for the most variance in ability to meet deadlines score. Further research is needed to explore the central role of ability to meet deadlines in active procrastination and the order in which SRL variables, active procrastination and negative influence of procrastination predict academic achievement. / Graduate

Self-paced study involves choosing items for (re)study and determining how much time will be allocated to those items so as to maximize later recall, making it a viable venue for examining whether there are age-related differences in metacognitive control. Two prominent models have been proposed to account for item selection and study time allocation behaviors during self-paced study. The Discrepancy Reduction Model (DRM; Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998; Nelson & Leonesio, 1988) suggests individuals will always select and allocate the most time to items that have not yet been learned, whereas the Region of Proximal Learning model (RPL; Metcalfe, 2002) predicts individuals will select the easiest unknown items and will only later select and allocate time to the more difficult items if time constraints permit, thus making distinctions among unlearned items graded by difficulty. Two experiments were conducted to examine whether younger and older adults item selection and study time allocation behaviors would be more consistent with DRM or RPL model predictions. Across both experiments younger and older adults initially selected easier items for study, providing the first evidence to date that the RPL model would extend to older adults self-paced study of heterogeneously difficult Spanish-English vocabulary pairs. However, both younger and older adults allocated more time to difficult than easier items. The assignment of point values to items in Experiment 2 affected how likely participants were to pursue each of four experimenter-determined task goals that either stressed the number of words recalled, points earned, or both. Whether point values initially favored recall of easy or difficult items interacted with time constraints to influence the basis (objective versus subjective difficulty) and order of participants item selections (Experiment 2). However, younger adults were better able to effectively allocate their study time to achieve self-determined (Experiment 1) and experimenter-determined goals (Experiment 2), indicating age-related differences in metacognitive control despite younger and older adults having similar memory self-efficacy ratings and encoding strategy use behaviors.

[Truncated abstract] Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been implicated to play a major role in many pathological conditions including heart attack and stroke. Their ability to modulate the extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase (ERK) and c-Jun Nterminal kinase (JNK) signalling pathways, thereby influencing cellular response has been well-documented. Recent studies implicate a central role for mitochondria in ERK and JNK activation by ROS although the mechanisms remained unresolved. Using Jurkat T-lymphocyte as a cell model, this study demonstrated increased mitochondrial ROS production as a result of decreased mitochondrial complex activities mediated by hydrogen peroxide treatment. This is the first study to show that mitochondria are not essential for activating ERKs, however damaged mitochondria producing ROS can be expected to cause sustained ERK activation . . . This study revealed that JNK and its upstream kinases MKK4, MKK7 and ASK1 are associated with the mitochondria. Furthermore, findings from this study imply that JNK resides in the mitochondrial matrix. This study is the first to demonstrate that mitochondrial JNK can be activated in a cell-free environment by signals originating from the mitochondria. Experimental work using isolated mitochondria demonstrated that mitochondrial JNK can be activated by ROS generated from the mitochondria themselves. Flavin-containing proteins appear to be the main sources of mitochondrial-ROS which signal through redoxsensitive proteins to activate mitochondrial JNK.

Lic.-avh. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2007. / Härtill 2 uppsatser.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2006. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-187). Also available online.

Thesis (MSc (Mathematical Sciences))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Context-free grammars are well-studied and well-behaved in terms of decidability, but many real-world problems cannot be described with context-free grammars. Grammars with regulated rewriting are grammars with mechanisms to regulate the applications of rules, so that certain derivations are avoided. Thus, with context-free rules and regulated rewriting mechanisms, one can often generate languages that are not context-free. In this thesis we study grammars with regulated rewriting mechanisms. We consider problems in which context-free grammars are insufficient and in which more descriptive grammars are required. We compare bag context grammars with other well-known classes of grammars with regulated rewriting mechanisms. We also discuss the relation between bag context grammars and recognizing devices such as counter automata and Petri net automata. We show that regular bag context grammars can generate any recursively enumerable language. We reformulate the pumping lemma for random permitting context languages with context-free rules, as introduced by Ewert and Van der Walt, by using the concept of a string homomorphism. We conclude the thesis with decidability and complexity properties of grammars with regulated rewriting.