MPH, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand / Poor retention rates and a lack of human resource management capacity have led to a critical shortage of nurses and serious disparities in their distribution between urban and rural areas in Zambia. The Zambian government is faced with the challenge of developing retention schemes that address the most pressing needs of nurses in rural service. The aim of the study is to contribute to the body of work in Zambia that looks at the influence of non-financial incentives on the retention of nurses in rural areas. The study also aims to show what factors nurses think would keep them in rural posting. The objectives of this study are to determine the perceptions of nurses in two rural hospitals in the Copperbelt province of Zambia about non-financial incentives that could influence retention in rural areas and to determine which factors nurses perceive to be the most important for retention. The study design was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Forty nurses were conveniently sampled. Data was collected by means of structured interviews using a questionnaire and was analysed using stata10. The majority of nurses strongly agreed that individual, institutional and local environmental factors play a significant role in retention. Factors identified as the most important for retention were motivation to work (n=26), appreciation from the community (n=33), ability to make decisions about work (n=17), satisfactory accommodation (n=32), availability of schools for children (n=26), managable distance to work (n=13), access to continuing education and iv professional development (n=26), having good relationships with colleagues (n=15) and, availability of essential equipment, tools and supplies (n=14). Factors ranked first choice according to level of importance by the majority of nurses were satisfactory accommodation (n=25), access to continuing education and professional development (n=20) and motivation to work (n=18). There are no straight forward answers to the problem of retention in rural areas. The development of appropriate strategies requires an understanding of the interaction of factors which influence nurses’ decisions to work in a rural and remote post. Successful retention strategies will require strengthening and upgrading of human resource management capacity. The response must be all inclusive, engaging relevant stakeholders, including non-health and nongovernmental group

The use of Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) wall structures has increased dramatically in recent years. Traffic barriers are frequently placed on top of the MSE wall to resist vehicular impact loads. The barrier systems are anchored to the concrete in case of rigid pavement. Nevertheless, in case of flexible pavement, the barriers are constructed in an L shape so that the impact load on the vertical part of the L can be resisted by the inertia force required to uplift the horizontal part of the L. The barrier must be designed to resist the full dynamic load but the size of the horizontal part of the L (moment slab) is determined using an equivalent static load. Current design practice of barriers mounted on top of MSE retaining wall is well defined for passenger cars and light trucks. However, the information of this impact level is extrapolated to heavy vehicle impact. Therefore, the bases of this research is to develop design procedure and to help understand the dynamic behavior of a barrier-moment slab system on top of an MSE wall when subjected to heavy vehicle impact loads. In a first part, numerical analyses were conducted to better understand the behavior of the barrier-moment slab system when subjected to heavy vehicle impact loads. The full-scale impact simulations were used to develop the recommendation for designing and sizing the barrier-moment slab system. In a second part, the barrier-moment slab systems defined to contain heavy vehicle impact loads were placed on top of an MSE wall model to study the kinematic behavior of the system. Loads in the soil reinforcing strips and displacements on the barriers and wall components are evaluated to define recommendation for design of strip reinforcements against pullout and yielding. In a third part, a full-scale crash test on a barrier-moment slab system on top of an instrumented 9.8 ft. (3 m) high MSE wall is described and analyzed. The MSE wall and barrier system were adequate to contain and redirected the vehicle and, therefore, it served as verification of the proposed recommendation. Finally, conclusions are drawn on the basis of the information presented herein.

The pressure retaining door is obviously a sensible part of an aircraft, and the design criteria is much more critical than for the fuselage, so a problem caused by this critical criteria is the heavy weight of the door structure because it should be strong enough to withstand loads and stiff enough to meet the sealing requirements. In spite of the pressure retaining door being so important, it is difficult to find design references. So, in this thesis, the pressure retaining door is investigated first, and then a typical structure of a type A door is selected as the study case using both metallic and composite material, in order to generate a standard method for door structure design, and to identify the key factors which can affect the structure weight. The study indicates that the structure weight of a type A door can be kept in a range for different combinations of beams and stringers, and the composite door structure can be 20% lighter than the metallic door while the stiffness of the two doors remains similar. It is found that the skin contributes much more weight to the door structure than other components and the skin thickness is affected by the short edge of the skin panel divided by beams and stringers. The results also found that it is much more serious when the end stop fails than when the middle stops fail. Therefore, it appears that the composite door is a good material as an alternative to aluminium. Also the method of door structure design is reasonable for the composite door, although it would be better to consider the stiffness of beams while in the theory design period. Besides IRP, the Group Design Project (GDP) is another important part of the MSc study; it lasts nearly half a year and we complete the Fly-wing concept design. The main contribution of the author to the GDP is the arrangement of doors, and also includes the family issues, cabin layout arrangement and a 3D model construct, which can be seen in APPENDIX B. According to the GDP work, I will have broadened my professional knowledge and will have an overall view of aircraft design.

Thesis (M.C.E.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisors: Dov Leshchinsky and Christopher L. Meehan, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

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This dissertation presents several studies relating to fundamental characterization of CMP consumables in planarization processes. These are also evaluated with the purposes of minimizing environmental impact and reducing cost of ownership (COO).The first study is conducted to obtain the retaining ring wear rate in a typical ILD CMP process and is specifically intended to investigate the effect of retaining ring materials and slot designs during the CMP process. The results show that retaining ring materials have effect on the COF, pad temperature and retaining ring wear rate, while retaining ring slot designs affect the pad surface abruptness. The second study is performed to compare the effect of different retaining ring slot designs on the slurry film thickness within the pad-wafer interface. A novel non-intrusive optical technique, dual emission UV-enhanced fluorescence (DEUVEF), was applied to accurately measure the film thickness of the slurry underneath the wafer during polishing. It is indicated that the optimized retaining ring slot design can significantly reduce the COO of CMP processes by increasing slurry utilization.A COF method is applied to measure the slurry mean residence time (MRT) during CMP. This technique uses transient COF data induced by a shift in slurry concentration to determine MRT. Variations in consumables as well as sliding velocity, pressure and slurry flow rate can affect the slurry MRT. One study in this dissertation focus on the effect of retaining ring slot designs on the slurry MRT. Another study compares the slurry MRT under same polishing conditions using pads with different groove width. Both studies are conducted on multiple sliding velocity, pressure and slurry flow rate variations to understand the characteristics of consumable designs. The method of measuring MRT during polishing presented in this dissertation can be easily applied in general CMP processes.The subsequent studies focus in the diamond conditioner discs characterization techniques. A newly developed method for determining active diamonds and aggressive diamonds on a diamond conditioner disc under a certain vertical load is elaborated in this dissertation. Later, this technique together with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging is implemented to analyze diamond pullout and fracture in CMP. Five different types of diamond conditioner discs are subjected to a novel accelerated wear test respectively to compare the extent of diamond pullout and fracture under the same conditioning condition

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.) in Civil and Environmental Engineering--University of Maine, 2003. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-169).

Thesis (M.S.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 27, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.