The primary purpose of this study was to determine if book reviews are useful and significant indicators of potential circulation. Major book reviewing sources were studied to determine if some were more useful than others in selecting books which circulate.

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease characterized by long- and short-term inflammation and bronchospasm susceptible to multiple triggers that affects patients across the lifespan. Asthma management is a primary care priority in Vermont, where there continues to be an above-average prevalence of asthma among both children and adults as compared to other states. However, many of Vermont's children and especially adults with asthma are not participating in regular check-ups for asthma management that would best prevent exacerbation of asthma symptoms. Several climate and weather elements including, but not limited to, extreme temperatures and particulate matter are known asthma triggers. Vermont's high per capita use of old woodstoves, pockets of poverty and cold winters are all factors that might collide to adversely impact residents' asthma. Insights into how climate and weather might be related to peak periods of acute asthma exacerbation (AAE) among individuals living in the rural Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (NEK) could provide valuable, regionally focused public health information to primary care providers on the front lines of asthma management. The objective of this research was to examine the potential relationship between the climate and weather of the NEK and visits for asthma exacerbation in the primary care setting. The research began with a retrospective chart review including visits to five different clinic sites in the NEK between 2009-2014 with the ICD-9 code for asthma exacerbation (493.xx) as the primary diagnosis. When visits were individually validated as an AAE, the clinic site, date of visit, and the patients' age and sex were documented. These validated visits were then analyzed against weather and climate data including temperature and air quality. Results suggest that while diurnal shifts and air quality do not show a strong relationship with AAEs in this area, colder days do appear to correlate to when patients visit primary care clinics in the NEK for AAEs.

This thesis explores the evolution and limitations of regulatory and historic district overlay zones and the inherent conflicts between the two as applied in Virginia. Historic district overlay zoning and the establishment of local historic districts and design review boards has developed in response to the failures of traditional zoning techniques to adequately protect the architectural character of Virginia’s historic urban landscapes. After almost fifty years of practice and improvement in the fields of urban planning and historic preservation, synchronizing regulatory and historic district overlay zones still presents difficulties for municipal administrators. Several Virginia jurisdictions are highlighted in the thesis to provide an insight into the application of these planning and preservation paradigms. These different municipal codes will provide a sample set of the most common problems which exist between regulatory and historic district overlay zoning. These issues include-design, nonconforming uses, code and conflicting ordinances, appeals, and demolitions by neglect clauses. While this thesis seeks to identify the most common problems found between regulatory and historic districts within Virginia it is not comprehensive nor does it provide recommendations for how to address the inherent conflicts.

55 Abstract - Judicial Review of Administrative Decisions in the Area of Television and Radio Broadcasting The aim of the thesis is firstly analyzing the system of radio and television broadcasting in the Czech Republic and the legal environment in which this system exists. In the beginning the thesis describes historical development of broadcasting in our country since monopoly state broadcasting system to the present dual system, which enables private subjects to run their own broadcasting. Furthermore, the thesis analyzes the role of the Czech Broadcasting Council as a central administrative body in the scope of media market. The Council grants broadcasting licences and registrations but primarily supervises whether broadcasters fulfil their duties established in the Broadcasting Act. In case they do not, the Council releases an administrative decision and may impose sanctions against broadcasters. The crucial part of this thesis deals with judicial review of the above mentioned administrative decisions. It describes legal regulation of the judicial review and deals with basic questions regarding the content of broadcasting. Firstly, it aims at judicial decisions regarding the legal requirement to present objective, impartial and unbiased information under section 31 of the Broadcasting Act. Moreover, it...

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common cause of disability in young people and yet there are no interventions available which reliably alter disease progression. This is despite several decades of research using the most common animal model of multiple sclerosis, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). There is now emerging evidence across the neurosciences to suggest that limited internal validity (measures to reduce bias) and external validity (e.g. using a clinically relevant animal model) may influence the translational success. Aim and objectives: To provide an unbiased summary of the scope of the literature on candidate drugs for MS tested in EAE to identify potential reasons for the failures to translate efficacy to clinical trials. My objectives were, across all of the identified publications, to: (1) describe the reporting of measures to reduce bias and to assess their impact on measures of drug efficacy; (2) assess the relationship between treatment related effects measured using different outcome measures; (3) assess the prevalence and impact of any publication bias; (4) compare findings from the above with another disease with limited translational success (Parkinson’s disease; PD). Methods: I used systematic searches of three online databases to identify relevant publications. Estimates of efficacy were extracted for neurobehavioural scores, inflammation, demyelination and axon loss. For PD experiments, we searched for dopamine agonists tested in animal models of PD with outcome assessed as change in neurobehavioural scores. I calculated normalised mean difference or standardised mean difference effect sizes and combined these in a meta-analysis using a random effects model. I used stratified meta-analysis or meta-regression to assess the extent to which different study design characteristics explained differences in reported efficacies. These characteristics included: measures to reduce bias (random allocation to group and blinded assessment of outcome), the animal species, sex, time of drug administration, route of drug administration and the number of animals per group. Publication bias was assessed using funnel plotting, Egger regression and “trim and fill”. Results: I identified 1464 publications reporting drugs tested in EAE. Reported study quality was poor: 11% reported random allocation to group, 17% reported blinded assessment of neurobehavioural outcomes, 28% reported blinded assessment of histological outcomes, and < 1% reported a sample size calculation. Estimates of efficacy measured as the reduction in inflammation were substantially higher in unblinded studies (47.1% reduction (95% CI 41.8-52.4)) versus blinded studies (33.1% (25.8-40.4). Moreover, the same finding was identified for 121 publications on dopamine agonists tested in experimental PD models where efficacy was measured as change in neurobehavioural outcomes. For EAE studies we were unable to include data from 631 publications describing original research. Usually this was because the publication did not include basic details such as the number of animals in each group (115 publications), the observed variance (592) or suitable control data (49). For each category of outcome I found evidence of a substantial publication bias. Interventions were most commonly administered on or before the induction of EAE with shorter times to treatment associated with higher estimates of efficacy for the reduction in mean severity scores (a neurobehavioural outcome). Treatment related effects were found to vary across different outcome measures with the largest effect being for the reduction in axon loss. Where neurobehavioural scores and axon loss were measured in the same cohort of animals, the concordance between efficacies in these increased with later times to treatment. Conclusions: In this, the largest systematic review and meta-analysis of animal studies in any domain, I have found that a large number of publications present incomplete data. In addition, measures to reduce bias are seldom reported, the lack of which is associated with overstatements of efficacy for both a measure of drug efficacy in EAE and experimental PD studies. Translational success may have also been affected by the majority of studies administering drugs on or before EAE induction which is of limited relevance in the clinical setting where patients do not present at that stage of disease. Moreover, my analysis of the relationship between outcome measures provides empirical evidence from systematically identified studies to suggest that targeting axon loss as later time points is most strongly associated with improvements in neurobehavioural scores. Therefore drugs which are successfully able to target axon loss at these time points may offer substantial hope for clinical success. Overall, improvements in the conduct and reporting of preclinical studies are likely to improve their utility, and the prospects for translational success. While my findings relate predominately to the animal modelling of MS and PD it is likely that they also hold for other animal research.

In December 2007 I began an internship with the Tennessee Williams Scholars' Conference/Tennessee Williams Annual Review. The Conference and Review are co-produced by Williams expert and professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University Dr. Robert Bray and the publications department of The Historic New Orleans Collection. The majority of my internship took place from my home and at The Collection, where I also currently serve full-time as an editor on book projects and the institution's quarterly magazine. The following report provides an overview of my internship, my analysis of the operation of the Conference/Review, and my recommendations for the organization developed over the course of my tenure, which will conclude in December 2008.

Context: This protocol is as a supplementary document to our review paper that investigates security-related challenges and solutions that have occurred during the past decade (from January 2003 to December 2013). Objectives: The objective of this systematic review is to identify security-related challenges, security goals and defenses in ubiquitous computing by answering to three main research questions. First, demographic data and trends will be given by analyzing where, when and by whom the research has been carried out. Second, we will identify security goals that occur in ubiquitous computing, along with attacks, vulnerabilities and threats that have motivated the research. Finally, we will examine the differences in addressing security in ubiquitous computing with those in traditional distributed systems. Method: In order to provide an overview of security-related challenges, goals and solutions proposed in the literature, we will use a systematic literature review (SLR). This protocol describes the steps which are to be taken in order to identify papers relevant to the objective of our review. The first phase of the method includes planning, in which we define the scope of our review by identifying the main research questions, search procedure, as well as inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data extracted from the relevant papers are to be used in the second phase of the method, data synthesis, to answer our research questions. The review will end by reporting on the results. Results and conclusions: The expected results of the review should provide an overview of attacks, vulnerabilities and threats that occur in ubiquitous computing and that have motivated the research in the last decade. Moreover, the review will indicate which security goals are gaining on their significance in the era of ubiquitous computing and provide a categorization of the security-related countermeasures, mechanisms and techniques found in the literature. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / Over time, the ‘normal’ experience of pregnancy transitioned to the hospital setting, leading to a discourse steeped in the notions of risks and complications. Risks and complications refer to health problems expectant women may experience, causing them to have a high-risk pregnancy. High-risk pregnancy refers to a pregnancy that negatively affects the health of the mother, the baby, or both, and evoking a range of emotional and psychological experiences. Research on high-risk pregnancy is predominantly found in the medical arena. Such research usually concerns the disease, while women’s emotional/psychological experiences are not sufficiently documented. For this reason, the objectives of this study was to explore the emotional and psychological experiences of women in the reviewed articles throughout their high-risk pregnancies, and identify the medical conditions and complications in the same reviewed articles. Ethics clearance was obtained from the senate research committee at UWC. The systematic review examined qualitative studies, including the qualitative components of mixed method studies published between January 2006 and June 2017. The databases that were searched are EbscoHost, JSTOR, Sage Journals Online, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Sabinet, Scopus, Emerald eJournals Premier, Pubmed, as well as Taylor and Francis Open Access eJournals. The study evaluated the literature found on these databases for methodological quality by using three stages of review (i.e. abstract reading, title reading, and full-text reading) and applying a meta-synthesis to the current evidence on the research topic. The findings provide empirical evidence based on sound research that medical conditions and complications (i.e. HELLP syndrome, thrombophilia, gestational diabetes, maternal near-miss syndrome, foetal abnormality, preterm birth, hypertension, and uterine rupture) are associated with women’s emotional and psychological experiences (i.e. fear, shock, feeling frightened, sadness, worry, alienation, frustration, grief, guilt, anger, ambivalence, despair, upset, loneliness and isolation, anxiety, depression, and PTSD) throughout their high-risk pregnancies. As a result of this, survivors of severe pregnancy complications have subsequent psychological and emotional challenges. It is therefore recommended that future researchers consider including quantitative studies in a systematic review on the same topic.

Magister Curationis - MCur / Background: Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) is one of the most preventable causes of maternal death, yet it still ranks as one of the main conditions responsible for maternal mortality. PPH occurs at a stage when a mother is the least likely to receive care, and mothers often do not survive to be referred to a more specialised level of care. This is compounded by the patient not being able to warn healthcare providers timeously about their condition and healthcare providers lacking training resulting in a lack of accuracy in diagnosis, lack of resources, and differing methods of treatment. Due to the lack of consensus in available treatment options, and the paucity of research aimed at clinical interventions for midwives at the primary care level, this research report aimed to investigate the evidence in order to establish the best practices and evidence for clinical interventions to manage postpartum haemorrhage for midwives at the primary care level. This is to ensure that the continuing education for midwives in practice is based on evidence to keep their skill set current and expose practitioners to the latest evidence based care. Aim: To systematically review all available published evidence for the acute non-pharmaceutical, non-surgical, management of PPH for use by midwives at a primary maternity care setting.

Abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) is one of the most common presenting complaints in our medical system with up to 30% of females affected by this condition. The current evaluation and management of AUB often requires multiple lengthy visits to both general practitioners and specialists. Advances in endoscopic technology have allowed clinicians to diagnose and treat women presenting with AUB in a single-visit within an outpatient uterine assessment and treatment unit (UATU). Unfortunately, the UATU is not the standard of care with very few locations in Canada providing this type of service. This thesis project aimed to synthesize data pertaining to efficacy and safety as well as to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a UATU service model compared to usual care in diagnosing and treating AUB. To address the main aim for this thesis project, the first manuscript focuses on the hysteroscopic procedures that may be offered in a UATU. The manuscript includes a systematic review that synthesizes outcome measures surrounding efficacy, patient safety, and cost data of outpatient hysteroscopy compared to hysteroscopy performed in the operating room. The second manuscript is a cost-effectiveness modelling study that compares cost and effectiveness outcomes, including time to diagnosis and time to treatment of a UATU versus usual care for women who present with AUB. Data used to populate the cost-effectiveness model were obtained from a retrospective review of patient charts and the published literature. The systematic review found no statistically significant difference in the safety, efficacy, or patient tolerability between outpatient and intraoperative hysteroscopy procedures. This review helps provide further support for performing procedures outside of a traditional operating room without increasing patient harm or compromising efficacy. However, given the current available evidence and limited number of studies, findings should be interpreted with caution. The cost-effectiveness analysis found that a UATU is cost-effective when compared to usual care in diagnosing and treating patients who present with AUB. These two studies combined provide evidence to support that the UATU has the potential to improve gynecologic care by reducing wait-times to receiving diagnosis and treatment and to lower overall costs to the health care system.