Objective: To understand the experiences of the dialysis decision-making process from the perspective of the significant other, specifically their role, influencing factors and the supportive interventions of the interprofessional team. Method: An interpretive description qualitative study was conducted using individual interviews and results were triangulated with decisional conflict and decisional regret quantitative results. Results: Ten participants described their role as advocating, providing a positive outlook, ‘being with’ the patient, learning together, sharing opinions, and communicating about values, preferences, feasibility of options. Environmental factors that influenced decision making included unexpected life change, choosing life, and personal health problems. Factors related to implementation of the treatment modality decision were unanticipated events, relationship changes, recreational travel changes, and the caregiver role. Nursing interventions are required to realign treatment expectations. Relevance: Significant others have an important role in supporting the patient making the dialysis decision and are often instrumental in implementing the decision.

Relatively little research exists on the life significance of outdoor education (OE) programs and courses. There is increasing interest in the OE field to move beyond simply focusing on program-specific outcomes to developing more evidence-based models that analyze the influence of specific mechanisms of change. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the significant life effect of a university OE course upon participants after the course, including the effect of the course upon participants’ intrapersonal, interpersonal and environmental relationships. The present investigation was a two part qualitative-quantitative study. The overarching research question was: What is the perceived life significance of a university undergraduate OE course? The current study involved in-depth interviews with a purposive intensity sample of 17 University of Ottawa alumni who had taken one of the university’s OE courses more than 20 years ago, followed by a web-based survey questionnaire completed by 46 University of Ottawa alumni and students who had taken one of the university’s OE courses between 1975 and 2009. Some of the survey participants had taken both the summer and winter OE courses offered by the University of Ottawa so there was a total of 65 separate course responses in the quantitative study. The findings from this study suggested that the OE course led to development of interpersonal skills, self-discovery, environmental impacts, leisure style change, and increased outdoor knowledge and skills amongst the participants. The idea that this outdoor knowledge and skills was transferred to others (e.g., students and children) also emerged from the data. In addition, in some instances participants expressed the idea that the OE course helped confirm or reinforce already-held beliefs about the outdoors. It is hopeful that the current findings can contribute to OE professional practice and demonstrate the need for OE in university settings.

Resources such as energy and water are forecasted to become scarcer in the future. The traditional engineering approach for dealing with this problem can be compromised by the rebound effect. Therefore, it is important that we design products that also encourage users to engage in pro-environmental behaviours, also known as environmentally significant behaviours (ESB). Lead-user theory was first applied to the problem of ESB, resulting in the discovery that resources, when presented in discrete instead of continuous form, enable conservation. The principle was verified empirically. A method was developed to help designers develop products that implement the discretization principle without compromising user needs. Affordance theory was also applied to the problem of ESB. Two methods, one to expedite the finding of affordances and the second to change a product’s affordances to enable ESB, were developed. The application of design theory and techniques to the ESB problem shows promise.

This descriptive phenomenology had two purposes: first, to explore the experience of making decisions for women with advanced cancer; and second, to explore the experience for significant others and health care team members as women made their decisions. A plethora of research exists on making decisions during the cancer experience, including research regarding: 1) decision-making styles; 2) factors or determinants which play a role in decision making; 3) information: needs, seeking behaviours, and utilization; and 4) decision support technologies. However, a gap exists in the literature regarding the experience of making decisions. Conversational interviews were conducted with five women and three relevant others for each woman: her primary nurse, her oncologist, and one significant other. Women were also provided with the opportunity to journal in a diary or email their memories of decisions and the surrounding experience. Van Manens (1990) phenomenology guided the analysis of data. For the women, analysis centered on the four existentials of lived time, lived other, lived space, and lived body, revealing four themes of the lived experience of making decisions: 1) control, 2) influence, 3) normalcy, and 4) vulnerability. Phenomenological analysis on data from the significant others revealed three themes: 1) what used to be, 2) power shift, and 3) life on hold. Themes for the health care teams experience as women made decisions were: 1) emotional detachment, 2) discomfort, and 3) acquiescing. Understanding the perspectives from these lived experiences will assist the health care team to support women, and their significant others, through the experience of making decisions.

This descriptive phenomenology had two purposes: first, to explore the experience of making decisions for women with advanced cancer; and second, to explore the experience for significant others and health care team members as women made their decisions. A plethora of research exists on making decisions during the cancer experience, including research regarding: 1) decision-making styles; 2) factors or determinants which play a role in decision making; 3) information: needs, seeking behaviours, and utilization; and 4) decision support technologies. However, a gap exists in the literature regarding the experience of making decisions. Conversational interviews were conducted with five women and three relevant others for each woman: her primary nurse, her oncologist, and one significant other. Women were also provided with the opportunity to journal in a diary or email their memories of decisions and the surrounding experience. Van Manens (1990) phenomenology guided the analysis of data. For the women, analysis centered on the four existentials of lived time, lived other, lived space, and lived body, revealing four themes of the lived experience of making decisions: 1) control, 2) influence, 3) normalcy, and 4) vulnerability. Phenomenological analysis on data from the significant others revealed three themes: 1) what used to be, 2) power shift, and 3) life on hold. Themes for the health care teams experience as women made decisions were: 1) emotional detachment, 2) discomfort, and 3) acquiescing. Understanding the perspectives from these lived experiences will assist the health care team to support women, and their significant others, through the experience of making decisions.

Resources such as energy and water are forecasted to become scarcer in the future. The traditional engineering approach for dealing with this problem can be compromised by the rebound effect. Therefore, it is important that we design products that also encourage users to engage in pro-environmental behaviours, also known as environmentally significant behaviours (ESB). Lead-user theory was first applied to the problem of ESB, resulting in the discovery that resources, when presented in discrete instead of continuous form, enable conservation. The principle was verified empirically. A method was developed to help designers develop products that implement the discretization principle without compromising user needs. Affordance theory was also applied to the problem of ESB. Two methods, one to expedite the finding of affordances and the second to change a product’s affordances to enable ESB, were developed. The application of design theory and techniques to the ESB problem shows promise.

abstract: The focus of this study is statistical characterization of the significant duration of strong ground motion time histories. The significant duration is defined as the time needed to build up between five and seventy five (SD575) and ninety five percent (SD595) of the energy of a strong motion record. Energy is measured as the integral of the square of the acceleration time history and can be used to capture the potential destructiveness of an earthquake. Correlations of the geometric means of the two significant duration measures (SD575 and SD595) with source, path, and near surface site parameters have been investigated using the geometric mean of 2,690 pairs of recorded horizontal strong ground motion data from 129 earthquakes in active plate margins. These time histories correspond to moment magnitudes between 4.8 and 7.9, site to source distances up to 200 km, and near surface shear wave velocity ranging from 120 to 2250 m/s. Empirical relationships have been developed based upon the simple functional forms, and observed correlations. The coefficients of the independent variables in these empirical relationships have been determined through nonlinear regression analysis using a random effects model. It is found that significant duration measures correlate well with magnitude, site to source distance, and near surface shear wave velocity. The influence of the depth to top of rupture, depth to the shear wave velocity of 1000 m/s and the style of faulting were not found to be statistically significant. Comparison of the empirical relationship developed in this study with existing empirical relationships for the significant duration shows good agreement at intermediate magnitudes (M 6.5). However, at larger and smaller magnitude, the differences between the correlations developed in this study and those from previous studies are significant. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering 2011

No description available.

In this letter we discuss the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market for European, Indian and US CDS entities during the financial crisis starting in 2007 using empirical First Significant Digit (FSD) distributions. We find out that on a time aggregated level the European and the US market obey empirical FSD distributions similar to the theoretical ones. Surprising differences are observed in the development of the FSD distributions between the US and the European market. While the FSD distribution of the US derivative market behaves nearly constant during the last financial crisis, we find huge fluctuations in the FSD distributions in the European market. One reason for these differences might be the possibility of a strategic default for US companies due to Chapter 11 and avoided contagion effects. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

No description available.