| Abstract: | Den forventede levealderen har økt nesten over hele verden. Dette har ført til at antall eldre stiger
raskt, og veksten er ventet å fortsette. I Norge vokser gruppen eldre over 80 år raskest. Det er
gjennomført mye internasjonal forskning om eldre og det å være deres pårørende. Fokus i denne
studien var eldre som ventet på sykehjemsplass i en nordnorsk kommune, og deres pårørende. Det
ble ikke funnet tidligere forskning om deres situasjon. Det var tidligere vurdert at disse eldre
trengte sykehjemsplass, men mangel på sykehjemsplasser medførte at de måtte klare seg hjemme
med hjelp av familie og hjemmetjeneste. Selv om de eldres pårørende tidligere hadde gitt signaler
om at de ikke lenger ønsket å gi omsorg til de eldre i hjemmet, måtte disse pårørende fortsette å
gjøre dette på ubestemt tid på grunn av manglende sykehjemsplass.
I denne forskningen er det benyttet kvalitative og kvantitative metoder. Artikkel I bygger på intervjuer med 11 pårørende og 11 pleiere om livssituasjonen til de samme eldre, samt angivelser av informantenes fysiske og psykiske belastning. Belastningsangivelsene er gitt på en delskala av The Multi-Dimensional Dementia Assessment Scale (MDDAS), som er et vurderingsskjema for eldre personer med demenssykdom. Intervjuene er analysert ved hjelp av kvalitativ innholdsanalyse. Data fra delskalaen er analysert ved hjelp av deskriptiv statistisk analyse. Artikkel II bygger på de samme 22 intervjuene og sammenligner pårørendes og pleiernes vurderinger av de eldres behov for sykehjemsinnleggelse. Artikkel III bygger på 15 intervjuer med pårørende og beskriver deres erfaringer med avlastning. I artikkel IV sammenlignes funksjonsnivået til eldre som ventet på sykehjemsplass med funksjonsnivået til beboere på et sykehjem ved hjelp av MDDAS. Data ble bearbeidet gjennom komparativ statistisk analyse (SPSS). Noen pårørende og pleiere vurderte belastningen som maksimal i forhold til hva de kunne klare. Pårørende følte et stort ansvar for de eldre, og uttrykte vanskelige følelser og ambivalens i forhold til de eldres fremtid (I). Pårørende og pleierne var i den aktuelle situasjonen ikke alltid enige om behovet for sykehjemsplass. Sosiale og økonomiske forhold, samt frykt for at det ble nødvendig å bruke tvang i forbindelse med flyttingen, medførte at flere pårørende takket ”nei” til tilbud om sykehjemsplass (II). Pårørendes erfaringer med avlastning varierte. Det var viktig at avlastningen var til støtte for hele familien (III). Samlet sett hadde beboerne på sykehjemmet et lavere funksjonsnivå enn de eldre som bodde hjemme, men på viktige områder hadde gruppene likheter. Statistisk signifikante forskjeller ble funnet i forhold til, blant annet, ADL-funksjoner, språk og orienteringsevne (IV). Eldre som ventet på sykehjemsplass var en sammensatt gruppe. De fleste hadde et reelt behov for sykehjemsomsorg, noe likhetene med sykehjemsbeboerne dokumenterte. Noen av de eldre ble av informantene vurdert til å leve under utrygge og uverdige forhold. Selv om hjemmetjenesten var innom dem opp til fem ganger i døgnet, opplevde flere pårørende at de hadde et 24 timers omsorgsansvar og en veldig vanskelig livssituasjon. Flere av de eldre nektet å ta imot hjelp og å flytte på sykehjem. De ville heller ikke dra dit på avlastning. Et sentralt spørsmål for pårørende og pleierne var om det var riktig å bruke tvang for å gi de eldre nødvendig helsehjelp. Det er en stor utfordring for en hjemmetjeneste med begrensede ressurser å kunne gi en fleksibel og tilrettelagt pleie og omsorg til eldre som venter på sykehjemsplass, samt å støtte deres pårørende. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/1836 |
| Abstract: | This article is chiefly concerned with Wallace Stegner’s ideas of aridity as the key to the understanding of the history and culture of the American West. It first examines the arguments of some major books published in the 1980s that helped strengthen Stegner’s conviction that the West was heading towards environmental disaster due to the rapidly increasing depletion of its rivers and aquifers, a projected ecological crisis that has grown even more acute at the beginning of the 21st century. The subsequent focus of this article, however, is on Stegner’s predominant proposition that the abuse of the arid nature of the West – the rampant disregard of its environmental limitations – is a product of a mindset and a culture that he finds particularly Western. In the course of his analysis, Stegner sees the rootlessness that typified his own family history as a direct reflection of the transientness characteristic of the collective history of the American West, which served to hamper the evolution of a sense of place that in his view is the prerequisite for a genuine stewardship of the land. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/3987 |
| Abstract: | To achieve low overhead, traditional cluster monitoring systems sample data at low frequencies and with coarse granularity. However, interactive monitoring requires frequent (up to 60 Hz) sampling of fine-grained data and visualization tools that can explore and display data in near real-time. This makes traditional cluster monitoring systems unsuited for interactive monitoring of distributed cluster applications, as they fail to capture short-duration events, making understanding the performance relationship between processes on the same or different nodes difficult. To address this issue, WallMon was developed, a tool for interactive visual exploration of performance behaviors in distributed systems. For gathering of data, WallMon is centered around an abstraction of collectors and handlers; collectors gathers data of interest, such as CPU and memory usage, and forwards it to handlers in a push-based fashion, while handlers take action upon the data. WallMon captures and visualizes data for every process on every node, as well as overall node statistics. Data is visualized using a technique inspired by the concept of information flocking. WallMon's design is based on the client-server model, and it is extensible through a module system that encapsulates functionality specific to monitoring (collectors) and visualization (handlers). A set of experiments have been carried out on a cluster of 29 nodes with 180 processes per node. Performance results show 7% (of 100) CPU usage at 64 Hz sampling rate when performing process-level monitoring with WallMon. Using WallMon's interactive visualization, we have observed interesting patterns in different parallel and distributed systems, such as unexpected ratio of user- and kernel-level execution among processes in a particular distributed system. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/3991 |
| Abstract: | For the mass transfer case (the absorption of moisture-water into concrete), the water content in concrete has a significant impact on its mechanical properties. Moisture transport in porous media, for example, plays an important role in the degradation of building materials such as mortars and concrete. LWE ignores the complex pore structure and network, typically found in cement materials. Many earlier research works has shown clearly that complex pores structure of concrete, strongly impedes the water penetration. Following this line, we believe also that the changing of pore structure may impose a strong effect on the water capillary suction. |
| Description: | Paper 3 of the thesis is not available in Munin due to publishers' restrioction: 3. Hung Thanh Nguyen, Frank Melandsø and Stefan Jacobsen: 'Time dependent durface heat transfer in light weight aggregate cement based materials', Engineering, 2010, 2, 307-317. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/eng.2010.25040 |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/3443 |
| Abstract: | Water demand management is a key focus area for most water managers and even more so in developing countries. Improved access to water is important to the poor. Water scarcity makes efficient management even more urgent and it creates more conflicts in water distribution. Different policies have been introduced to ensure a water management system that cares for the poor, among them the Increasing Block Tariff (IBT) structure. Studies demonstrate that it is very important to know the shape of the demand curve when deciding on the IBT structure. This is particularly so when it comes to supplying water to the poor. The purpose of this paper is to provide a greater understanding of the factors that influence water consumption. It also aims to provide an estimate for the price elasticity of water demand, using data obtained from households living on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The data covers a period of up to 60 months from July 1998 to June 2003. Water consumption data was obtained from the local government, the City of Cape Town (CCT) and a survey study in five suburbs of the area. A panel data analysis (correcting for heteroscedasticity and serial correlation) demonstrates how different factors influence water consumption, among them the price of water. We find that consumption is insensitive to price changes among the poor, while the richest group of households react to price changes much more. We also find that using actual prices in the estimation does not address the simultaneity in the data and we therefore apply a 2SLS analysis in our model. Our results reflect a negative price elasticity of demand for water in the short run. A key finding results from splitting the data into different income groups. We find a price elasticity for water demand of only –0.23 for the lowest-income group, whereas the high-income group has a price elasticity of -0.99. The results may add to the knowledge needed to improve an IBT structure to achieve greater equity. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/928 |
| Abstract: | Water is an increasing source to conflict throughout Central Asia. The problems of water management are caused by lack of efficient cooperation between the Central Asian states, as the states fail to treat the question of water management in a holistic manner. Rather than relating to water management from a regional perspective, the states are putting their own national needs first. To effectuate water management in Central Asia, measures to enhance cooperation mechanisms may thus be helpful. This thesis explores whether including actors from the local level may contribute to mitigate the water situation in Central Asia. In order to provide a basis for thorough analysis of whether local actors should be included in water management to a larger extent, the study applies a broad selection of interviews conducted with various actors engaged in water management in Central Asia. Perspectives within the center-periphery theory provide a theoretical framework for analyzing local involvement. In order to provide a basis for pragmatic discussion of how local actors can be included in water management, the concept of center-periphery is deconstructed into more tangible elements. It is my opinion that this theoretical approach allows me not only to better understand the mechanisms behind water management, but that it also provides me with a tool for pointing out some suggestions for how the water situation may be mitigated. Based on the empirical findings and the theoretical discussion, the thesis argues that involving actors from the local level is likely to build trust between actors located at different levels of governance, thus facilitating cooperation. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4350 |
| Abstract: | Virkninga av å ha et bølgedempende overflatemateriale i ei havoverflate er studert, med særlig vekt på betydninga av strålingstrykket (-stresset) eller bølgetrykket fra et innfallende, udempet bølgefelt. Det er et teoretisk studium av den dynamiske prosess som foregår når udempede overflatebølger propagerer inn i et område med bølgedempende overflatesjikt, i lys av det bølgetrykk bølgene øver på dette sjiktet. En hydrodynamisk modell som beskriver prosessen er utviklet. Perturbasjonsteori og ikke-lineær analyse er anvendt for å løse de grunnleggende bevaringsligningene for moment (Navier-Stokes' ligninger) og masse, innenfor en væskebeskrivelse hvor man "følger med i" bevegelsen til de enkelte væskepartikler (Lagrange-beskrivelse) - til forskjell fra den mer vanlige feltbeskrivelse av væskebevegelse (Euler-beskrivelse). Modellen er anvendt på to typer overflatemateriale: i) Mono-molekylær oljefilm, hvor tangentialstresset i filmen er viktig, og ii) et overflatelag av is-sørpe, hvor den økte viskositeten er avgjørende. En del dynamiske implikasjoner er utledet ved hjelp av analytiske beregninger: I tilfellet oljefilm vil det oppstå et midlere tangentielt overflatestress i filmen, og det er vist at dette kan uttrykkes ved en formel som er meget lett å interpretere fysisk. For is-sørpe viser beregningene at det vil oppstå sirkulasjon i sørpa, noe som også er påvist eksperimentelt av andre tidligere. Omfattende og tidkrevende analytiske beregninger har vært nødvendig. Det viste seg etter hvert at de svært uoversiktlige uttrykk som inngår, lar seg skrive på en meget kompakt og symmetrisk form som gjør framstillinga "lesbar". Resultatene er videre forenlige med resultater fra mye enklere og intuitive modeller, noe som bekrefter gyldigheten av de enkle modellene. Dette er viktig med tanke på anvendelser. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/283 |
| Abstract: | My first experience with violent conflict started when I first heard of a rebel attack in the neighbouring country of Liberia, 1989, where a group of armed men began an assault on the regime of the former dictator, Samuel K. Doe. To quote Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions’, in other words, what started in Liberia as an isolated incident soon turned out to be a catastrophic quagmire. It led to the mass execution of people; the wanton destruction of infrastructure and the massive wave of refugees fleeing to the neighbouring states including Sierra Leone. Ironically, the armed group, which called itself the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), stated that their objective was to oust the corrupt and oppressive regime of the then leadership. Significantly, the leadership of Sierra Leone was no exception to this kind of socio-economic and political problems but the APC government did not think that a similar fate lurked in its path. Two years later a similar group of armed men, who were termed marauders, attacked Sierra Leone in the eastern district of Kailahun, 23rd March 1991.This mist, which at first seemed like a man’s fist, blew and turned out to be a tempestuous wind that greatly struck Sierra Leone for a decade. This wave of violent conflict became one of the darkest spots in the history of West Africa at the time; it began spreading like a cancer, and took many political pundits by surprise. Like many people then, and may be future generations, I became interested in why and how such madness was unleashed on Sierra Leone during 1991-2002. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/1586 |
| Abstract: | Når Cybermetrics Lab beregner sin “Ranking Web of Repositories”, teller de lenker til vitenarkivenes innhold, som en av fire faktorer de bygger sin ranking på. Men de teller kun lenker som er bygd opp slik som Cybermetrics Lab selv mener at lenker bør være bygd opp. Andre lenker blir kort og godt ignorert. Og dette er ikke begrunnet med tekniske begrensninger, men utelukkende med Cybermetrics Labs syn på hvordan lenker bør se ut. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4582 |
| Abstract: | We present several fundamental duality theorems for matroids and more general combinatorial structures. As a special case, these results show that the maximal cardinalities of fixed-ranked sets of a matroid determine the corresponding maximal cardinalities of the dual matroid. Our main results are applied to perfect matroid designs, graphs, transversals, and linear codes over division rings, in each case yielding a duality theorem for the respective class of objects. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4862 |
| Abstract: | Objective: Kinship foster care has become the placement of choice in the Western world. This article explores the welfare, labour-force participation, and caregiving role of kinship foster mothers in Norway.
Method: The study supplements a quantitative study of Norwegian long-term kinship and nonkinship foster care with a qualitative study of parenting in formal kinship foster care. A total of 123 kinship and 88 nonkinship foster mothers participated in the quantitative study. The qualitative data is based on interviews with 22 kinship foster mothers about their caregiving experience. Findings: Kinship foster care in Norway can be described as gendered, in that it is usually women who assume the responsibility for relatives’ children. The economic activity of most kinship foster mothers in Norway is comparable with that of the country’s female population in general. The prevalence of single providers among kinship foster mothers is no higher than for the country as a whole. The education level of kinship foster mothers is lower than the female population average. Conclusion: Social welfare authorities should pave the way for more men to become caregivers, and for development of the system to strengthen the position of women in relation to the their services. |
| Description: | This is a submitted (preprint) version. The article is published with altered title in European Journal of Social Work 12(2009) number 4, p. 465-478, which is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691450902840655 |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/2359 |
| Abstract: | On the basis of syntactic and morphological evidence from West Greenlandic (WG) antipassive (AP) constructions, I argue against the view that the AP affix is nominal. The fact that the transitivizing and the antipassive affixes in a number of verbs are in complementary distribution, leads me to conclude that they both realize a light verb, transitivizing v, one on the ERG-NOM pattern, the other on the NOM-ACC pattern. Nominalization facts of the two clause types indicate their syntactic structure, with possible implications for the semantic interpretation of the object and the position of the ergative subject. |
| Description: | In special issue: Proceedings of SCL 19 |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/264 |
| Abstract: | The protected area (PA) coverage is used as an indicator of biodiversity protection worldwide. The effectiveness of using PAs as indicators has been questioned due to the diversity of designations included in such measures, especially those PAs established for other purposes than biodiversity protection. Although international standards have been developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the policies on the ground have been developed independently of the IUCN categories. This makes the use of IUCN categories dubious measures of biodiversity conservation. A management plan is crucial for effective management of the parks and for guidance on how biodiversity should be prioritized against other goals. We therefore analyzed the aims and the regulations in management plans of alpine PAs in Spain as a first step for evaluating conservation performance. We used content analysis and CAiv to assess how aims and regulations vary in relation to three explanatory factors: IUCN categories, Vegetation Zones and Autonomous Communities. We found the aims of many parks to be vague, without clear indication on how to prioritize biodiversity goals. Furthermore only 50% of them actually have a management plan, which strengthens our argument about unclear guidance of PA management. Although aims could partly be related to IUCN categories, the regulations showed no clear relationship to international policies, which reflects that aims are not necessarily implemented in practice. Devolution to Autonomous Communities could be one explanation for the large variation in management practices among parks. Further studies are needed to evaluate the impact of such policies on biodiversity. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4954 |
| Abstract: | The Sámis are the indigenous population of Northern Scandinavia. When the oppressive policy against the Sámi population in Norway was lightened during the 1960s, many Sámi communities established language and cultural centers for documentation and development of their language and cultural heritage as the oral tradition lost its ground in the modernization process. This paper aims to discuss how Sámi cultural centers use documentation both as a way of remembering the past and as a political strategy in order to produce evidence for land and water claims. The Sámi centers are many-faceted institutions and document theory is suggested as a theoretical perspective in order to analyze why these institutions were established and how they are functioning today. Two cases are presented. The first shows how the centers use documentation as a technique for restoring the past. The second is a ruling in the Norwegian High Court that shows a new turn in what can be accepted as documents proving indigenous land and water claims. This article is an attempt to introduce document theory as an analytical tool for analyzing the documentation processes in indigenous cultural centers. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4576 |
| Abstract: | This study explored the extent to which adolescents’ motives for leisure activity participation are related to their perceptions of competence and relatedness in different kinds of activities and aimed to provide new insight into boys’ and girls’ leisure experiences and their motivational orientations for activity participation. These proposed associations were based on previous empirical work and the theoretical frameworks of motive disposition approach and were tested in a nationally representative sample of Norwegian adolescents (N = 3273) aged 15 and 16 years (51.8% boys) from the World Health Organization’s crosssectional survey, Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children 2005/06. The findings in the current study supported the hypothesis regarding matched correlations between specific motives and specific outcomes in that the adolescents seem to get (perceived competence and relatedness) what they want (competence and social motives) within leisure activities. Furthermore, the analysis using structural equation modeling indicated different motivational orientations in types of leisure activity participation between girls and boys, although the mediating effects of leisure activity participation in different types of activities were not significant. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4940 |
| Abstract: | Denne oppgaven tar for seg motivasjon og erfaring av forskningsdeltakelse. Motivasjon og erfaring uttrykkes gjennom en kvalitativ studie av kvinner i overgangsalderen. Deres erfaringer baseres på deltakelse i forskning gjennom å delta i kontrollgruppen. Hensikten er å få en innsikt i motivasjon for å melde seg til frivillig deltakelse og erfaringer med å delta i forskning. Gjennom å kontekstualisere forsikringsdeltakelse bidrar denne oppgaven også til mer innsikt i overgangsalderen. I den sosiologiske sammenhengen er dette interessant fordi det kan si noe om konteksten som forskningsdeltakelsen tar form i. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/4553 |
| Abstract: | This thesis investigates Conservative’s and Labour’s use of metaphors in their 1997 manifestos. Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Lakoff’s Strict Father and Nurturant Parent models as framework, we look for conceptual metaphors as well as possible relations to underlying morality and family based reasoning, as predicted by the SF and NP models. The hypothesis is that the ideological differences in Conservative and Labour politics will not only surface in their language use, and thus in the metaphors they employ, but that the metaphors we find in the manifestos will prove to reveal underlying conceptual differences in the two parties |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/1262 |
| Abstract: | Health is one of the major problems facing most developing countries like Zambia. Poor economies, low funding, shortage of staff, epidemics like AIDS, coupled with poor and sometimes inaccessible facilities make the provision of health difficult. The 1978 Alma Ata conference’s call for health for all seemed a far cry for such countries. But the conference was aware of this problem and thus, its recommendation for the utilization of traditional practitioners in an integrated health system. One of such integration is that of Traditional midwifery with the health system. Under this system, observations and questions arise; does the traditional midwife lack any form of knowledge that can be exchanged between the two systems of medicine? What does the traditional midwife know? Is it knowledge from the point of view of the traditional midwife herself, from her clients or indeed from the biomedical professionals? Thus, the focus of this thesis is knowledge. Traditional midwifery is analyzed from a point of view of knowledge; how it is perceived, recognized and/or utilized, in such an integrated system. The analytical frame work in this thesis consists of situated knowledge, Epistemology discrimination and Feminist critique on development theories. Qualitative methods were the main methods used to collect primary data during the field work in Kabuyu, Zambia. In this thesis, I argue that what the traditional midwife practices is knowledge. Based on the local experiences and traditions, this knowledge may be different from what is commonly called “western” knowledge. However, this difference should not be the basis of discriminating it from the world body of knowledge. I suggest communication between the different kinds of knowledge systems under the integrated program for any meaningful development to take place. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10037/157 |
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