Quality of Life and Panic Disorder

Panic disorder has been associated with pervasive social and health consequences similar to or greater than those associated with major depression. Studies have been found that support findings concerning diminished quality of life for persons currently being treated, or shortly after treatment for anxiety disorders, but little is said in regards to quality of life (QOL) in years that follow treatment. This research project attempts to ascertain if there is a difference between the findings of previous studies with this more recent examination of QOL in panic disorder patients. Furthermore, implications for practice show use of quality of life assessment is helpful in the treatment of panic disorder and measuring treatment outcomes

Designing a self-directed gamified professional development course for technology integration

Gamified Professional Development for Technology Integration is a one credit license renewal or graduate credit course that can be offered to teachers at the elementary and secondary levels, and pre-service teachers at post-secondary levels, for self-paced learning. Created in response to a lack of dedicated in-service time and ineffective professional development, I sought to develop a rigorous self-paced course using the Understanding by Design framework (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) – a course where teacher-learners could master technology tools, make their personal meaning, and independently/flexibly transfer learning to authentic tasks they could replicate in their own classrooms

Object-oriented Modeling of Manufacturing Resources Using Work Study Inputs

Resources are the core of manufacturing models. They provide information about the people and equipment that perform activities on the shop floor. Comprehensive representations of equipment are common but human resources are often defined to a very limited extent. This paper presents how work study data can be applied as input to detailed modeling of human manufacturing resources. The purpose is to provide a valid representation of manual work tasks on a shop floor level. If implemented in manufacturing models the valid representation will contribute to improve planning, control and execution of production. It also facilitates and encourages production improvement initiatives

Kan nutritionsbehandling bidra till läk-ning av trycksår bland äldre patienter?

Sahlgrenska Akademin vid Göteborgs universitet Avdelningen för invärtesmedicin och klinisk nutrition Titel: Kan nutritionsbehandling bidra till läkning av trycksår bland äldre patienter? Författare: Anton Kinnander, Sandra Smidelik Handledare: Elisabet Rothenberg Examinator: Anna Winkvist Linje: Dietistprogrammet, 180/240 hp Typ av arbete: Examensarbete, 15 hp Datum: 12-04-11 Bakgrund Då antalet äldre och multisjuka ökar i västvärlden är det rimligt att anta att incidens och prevalens av trycksår kommer att öka. En svensk studie från 2009 visade att så många som 59 % av geriatriska patienter inom svensk sjukvård hade utvecklat trycksår. Symptomen för trycksår innefattar milda rodnader på huden till allvarliga skador på djupt liggande vävnader. Tiden det tar att utveckla trycksår sträcker sig från timmar till några veckor. Riskfaktorer för att utveckla tryck-sår är bland annat; hög ålder, fysisk funktionsnedsättning och undernäring, vilket gör att äldre patienter är en utsatt grupp. Även om den främst kända behandlingen är att undvika konsekvent eller upprepat tryck mot beniga kroppspartier har nutritionen fått en allt mer framträdande roll i behandlingen. Syfte Att studera evidensläget för effekten av nutritionsbehandling på läkning av trycksår bland äldre patienter. Sökväg Sökningar i databaserna PubMed och Scopus utfördes i februari 2012. Sökord som använ-des var: ”Pressure ulcer nutrition”, ”Pressure ulcer Nutrition Elderly RCT Treament”, ”Pressure ulcer nutritional supplementation”. Urvalskriterier Artiklar som inkluderades var originalartiklar skrivna på svenska eller engelska som rapporterade effekten av nutritionsbehandling på läkningen av trycksår. De skulle vara RCT (ran-domized controlled trial), och studera äldre patienter (>65 år), av båda kön. Primärt effektmått skulle vara trycksårens yta (längd x bredd) och sekundärt förändringar av värdet i PUSH-skalan (Pressure Ulcer Scale for Healing). Datainsamling och analys Studierna som fyllde urvalskriterierna analyserades genom Statens bered-ning för medicinsk utvärderings standardiserade mall för RCT. Resultaten sammanfördes sedan i enlighet med ”Sammanfattande evidensformulär” publicerad av avdelningen för invärtes medicin och klinisk nutrition, Sahlgrenska akademin. Resultat Tre studier inkluderades som samtliga visade att nutritionsbehandling hade en signifikant positiv effekt på läkningen av trycksår samt förbättrade värden på PUSH-skalan i två av studier-na. Studierna uppvisade gemensamt medelhög evidensgrad för båda effektmåtten. Slutsats Baserat på aktuella resultat förbättras läkningen av trycksår hos äldre patienter med nutritionsbehandling. Mer forskning behövs dock för att fastställa mängd och sammansättning för optimerad trycksårsläkning.Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Nutrition Title: Can nutritional support contribute to the healing of pressure ulcers in elderly patients? Author: Anton Kinnander, Sandra Smidelik Supervisor: Elisabet Rothenberg Examiner: Anna Winkvist Programme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTS Type of paper: Examination paper, 15 hp Date: 12-04-11 Background The number of elderly patients with co-morbidity is increasing in the western world. It is therefore reasonable to predict increasing incidence and prevalence of pressure ulcers. One study, published 2009, found that as many as 59 % of geriatric patients within the Swedish health care system had developed pressure ulcers. Symptoms vary from mild erythema to severe deep tissue damage and development of pressure varies from hours to weeks. Risk factors include; high age, dysmobility and malnutrition, making elderly patients at high risk for developing pres-sure ulcers. Even if the foremost known treatment is avoiding frequent pressure at bony sites, nutrition is becoming an emerging factor. Objective To evaluate the evidence for nutritional treatment on healing of pressure ulcers among elderly patients. Search strategy Data collection was performed in the search engines PubMed and Scopus in Febru-ary of 2012. Search terms used were the following; ”Pressure ulcer nutrition”, ”Pressure ulcer Nutrition Elderly RCT Treatment”, ”Pressure ulcer nutritional supplementation”. Selection criteria The included studies were original articles, in Swedish or English, and studied the effect of nutritional support on pressure ulcer healing. The studies had to be human RCT (ran-domized controlled trial) with elderly patients (>65 years of age), both men and women. The primary endpoint were changes of the surface area of the pressure ulcers (length x width) and the secondary changes in the PUSH-scale score. Data collection and analysis The data collection was performed according to the selection criteria’s. They were analyzed using a standardized template for RCT published by SBU. The studies were added together and evaluated by the “Sammanfattande evidensformulär” published by the Insti-tution for Internal medicine and Clinical nutrition, the Sahlgrenska Academy. Main results Three studies were included and they all showed a significant positive effect on the reduction of the surface area of pressure ulcers due to nutritional support. Two of them showed significant changes of the score in the PUSH-scale. The joint evidence value of the studies was moderate, regarding both endpoints. Conclusions Results demonstrates that nutritional support has a positive effect on the healing of pressure ulcers in elderly patients. More research is needed to determine optimal composition of nutritional support for the healing of pressure ulcers

The Turkish-Iranian Gas Relationship: Politically Successful, Commercially Problematic: OIES Paper: NG38

With proven natural gas reserves standing at 991.6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), Iran holds the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia1. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the production of gas in Iran has mainly been intended to meet the domestic demand2. However, at the end of 2001 Iran began to export gas to Turkey. Besides the Turkish desire to explore the Iranian gas market, the huge natural gas resources have also attracted international energy companies worldwide. However, from the Iranian side the focus has mainly been on oil exports, and the Iranian gas market has been very difficult for international companies. Policy makers in Iran have also been hard to cooperate with, and tough conditions have been imposed on any company seeking to invest in Iran´s natural gas fields. The most successful Iranian gas export trade in the post-revolutionary era has been between Iran and Turkey even though this relationship, which is the focus of this paper, has been far from successful

”Det ska vara en chef, inte en mespropp!” : En kvalitativ studie om två olika generationers uppfattningar av motiverande ledarskap

Arbetstagares närmsta chef har en specifik roll som innebär att leda och fördela arbetet men även att vara en förebild och ansvara för vilket klimat som finns inom arbetsgruppen. På arbetsmarknaden återfinns människor från olika generationer, dessa tenderar att uppleva och förstå världen på olika sätt. Detta gör chefens ansvarsroll mer komplex eftersom dennes ledarskap ska motivera människor som förstår världen på olika sätt. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka två generationer av arbetstagares uppfattningar om vad ett motiverande ledarskap innebär. För att uppfylla syftet används två forskningsfrågor: Vilka uppfattningar har de två generationerna om ledarskapstyperna: Auktoritärt, demokratiskt och låt-gå-ledare? Vilka likheter och skillnader finns mellan de två generationernas uppfattningar kring motiverande ledarskap? Metoden är kvalitativ och det empiriska materialet har samlats in med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer med sammanlagt sex intervjupersoner tillhörande två olika generationer, 1960- och 1990-talister. Det teoretiska ramverk som använts för att analysera det empiriska materialet består av Lennéer Axelson och Thylefors (2005) teori om de tre ledartyperna: auktoritärt, demokratiskt samt låt-gå-ledare och Giddens (2008) självet och självidentitet. Resultatet tyder på att det inte finns någon direkt skillnad mellan de två generationernas uppfattningar om vad ett motiverande ledarskap innebär. Generationerna hade liknande uppfattningar gällande hur en chef ska agera för att dennes ledarskap ska uppfattas som motiverande. Det handlar om att skapa en delaktighet bland medarbetarna där dessa känner sig sedda och bekräftade samt att chefen behöver vara närvarande för att kunna skapa en relation till medarbetarna

The Turkish-Iranian Gas Relationship: Politically Successful, Commercially Problematic

With proven natural gas reserves standing at 991.6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), Iran holds the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia1. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the production of gas in Iran has mainly been intended to meet the domestic demand2. However, at the end of 2001 Iran began to export gas to Turkey. Besides the Turkish desire to explore the Iranian gas market, the huge natural gas resources have also attracted international energy companies worldwide. However, from the Iranian side the focus has mainly been on oil exports, and the Iranian gas market has been very difficult for international companies. Policy makers in Iran have also been hard to cooperate with, and tough conditions have been imposed on any company seeking to invest in Iran´s natural gas fields. The most successful Iranian gas export trade in the post-revolutionary era has been between Iran and Turkey even though this relationship, which is the focus of this paper, has been far from successful

The Lozanov Teaching Method/Suggestopedia : A Comparative Study of Suggestopedic Practice andTraditional Teaching of Foreign Languages

This is a qualitative research project aimed to compare traditional teaching of foreign languages and suggestopedia in order to seek an answer to whether the suggestopedic practice is compatible with traditional school.  The theoretical framework is based on Michel Foucault’s history of ideas of how power has developed over time and how power structures have shaped society, institutions and consequently school. A theoretical review of how language didactics have evolved over the last centuries is added to Foucault’s ideas for the purpose of establishing a definition of traditional teaching.  A collection of empirical material has been carried out by interviewing teachers practicing suggestopedic pedagogy and subsequently analyzed and interpreted from a phenomenological perspective, with a hermeneutic approach. The result of the study shows that school as an institution can be said to consist of an establishment maintained through coercion, control, assessment and ranking, factors that have consequences for how teaching is designed and thereby, as the study shows, implying a risk of leading to insecurity, stress, and anxiety. This seems to stand in contrast to the very basic attitude of suggestopedia which fundamental idea can be summarized in the effort to create an interplay between the subconscious, or passive, learning level and the active, conscious learning level which requires an environment characterized by safety, freedom, and for the student a sense of continually feeling competent. However, according to Foucault, the power structures described in the theoretical chapter pervade all of society why it could be stated that suggestopedia also constitutes a system of power. The comparative analysis could therefore give the impression of being somewhat misleading.  The study does not result in a distinct answer to the question of whether there is room for suggestopedic practice in traditional school but rather discusses prerequisites and possibilitie

A comparison between MongoDB & CouchDB on search performance : A comparative analysis

When storing and handling Big Data sets a database management system (DBMS) can be implemented to administrate and query databases. The Swedish Internet is a big unstructured data set that contains all published Swedish Websites since the late 1990’s. NoSQL DBMSs such as MongoDB and CouchDB are particularly suited to store the Swedish Internet. Comparing the search performance of MongoDB and CouchDB in this scenario required the insertion of a subset of the Swedish Internet, querying of the data and measuring the search performance. The results show that CouchDB has in general a superior performance but comes with a drawback which is its indexation time. If a query will only be executed a few amount of times MongoDB is generally the better choice. Further studies needs to be conducted in order to assess the performance of NoSQL DBMSs over the whole dataset

Predicting profitability of new customers using gradient boosting tree models : Evaluating the predictive capabilities of the XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost algorithms

In the context of providing credit online to customers in retail shops, the provider must perform risk assessments quickly and often based on scarce historical data. This can be achieved by automating the process with Machine Learning algorithms. Gradient Boosting Tree algorithms have demonstrated to be capable in a wide range of application scenarios. However, they are yet to be implemented for predicting the profitability of new customers based solely on the customers’ first purchases. This study aims to evaluate the predictive performance of the XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost algorithms in this context. The Recall and Precision metrics were used as the basis for assessing the models’ performance. The experiment implemented for this study shows that the model displays similar capabilities while also being biased towards the majority class