The upward trend of online shopping, together with rapid technological advancements and evolving consumer behaviour results in increasing decision-making complexity for retailers. Location, whether site selection for a new retail store or understanding target markets, is more complex now than ever before. Location intelligence has emerged as a technology that is fundamentally changing the retail game and offering early adopters a competitive edge. The purpose of the study was to undertake an analysis of the role that location intelligence plays in decision-making as a strategic enabler for South African retail growth. Through an exploratory qualitative research design, making use of semi-structured interviews with 12 high-ranking executives, the research explored whether retail executives were aware of the term ‘location intelligence’ and to what extent they had been exposed to geographical or location-based tools and technologies for decision-making. Furthermore, the research explored retail executives’ perceptions of the role of location intelligence for competitive advantage as well as to what extent location intelligence has been adopted for strategic decision-making. Key findings from the thematic analysis showed that location intelligence is understood from an operational perspective and not core to the firms’ retail model and strategy. The study also found that although executives believed that location is key to their organisation’s success, they were unaware of the benefits of location intelligence for strategic decision-making. This research contributes to Retail Decision-Making Theory and the internal environment component of the retail location planning and decision-making model in that macro, meso and micro factors influencing retail location decision-making were understood. Furthermore, the study contributes to Location Theory from a strategic perspective. The outcome of this research also provides some insight into the extent to which location intelligence has been adopted within the South African retail sector. The research offers key recommendations for the adoption of location intelligence and mentions areas for future research / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / pt2020 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA

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Cell migration is essential for homeostasis and the development of metastases. We hypothesize that cell migration is regulated by mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum morphology. Using live cell microscopy, we found that mitochondria specifically migrate into the biochemically dense leading edge of the cell interacting with focal adhesions as well. At the leading edge the mitochondria are visibly shorter and less tubular than the perinuclear area. This is related to the elevated levels of fission events per minute in the leading edge and elevated levels of fusion events per minute in the trailing edge. We observe that mitochondria migrate along microtubules and simultaneously interact with the ER. When the ER is sheet-like the mitochondria are longer and tubular and when the ER is tubular the mitochondria are shorter and punctate. This change in ER and mitochondria morphology changes the cell’s ability to migrate. CLIMP63 cells have more sporadic turns, take longer to make turns, have shorter distances travelled and shorter displacements. To determine whether mitochondria dynamics play a role we examined these cell migration parameters in the presence of OPA1 and Drp1. This allowed us to conclude that the ER morphology is responsible for the distance and displacement the cell travels while the mitochondria is responsible for the angles the cell turns. When the ER is sheet-like the cells will be travel shorter total distances and displacements and when the cell has longer mitochondria it will be sporadic turns and take longer to make these turns.

As the global energy crisis and environmental pollution problem continues, there is an increasing demand for clean and sustainable energy storage and conversion technologies, such as water-splitting electrolysis. Water electrolysis is a process of running an electrical current through water in separating the hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a key reaction in this electrochemical process, and the electrochemical performance of these systems is usually hindered by the slow OER reaction kinetics. In order to achieve high energy conversion efficiency, the development of efficient OER catalysts is the key. To achieve that, abundant research is done by using noble metal oxides as catalyst, such as IrO2 and RuO2. However, considering their high cost, a cheap earth-abundant material with a high OER catalytic activity is required. Accordingly, this study has been focused on the synthesis of three dimensional porous structured Ni-based OER catalysts. First, a 3D porous Ni meso-foam was developed through a facile high-temperature one-pot synthesis method, and its catalytic activity towards OER was explored. Specifically, the as-synthesized Ni meso-foam material, referred to as raw NMF, has a wire-linked structure and high surface area. A reduction procedure was introduced to obtain reduced Ni meso-foam materials, referred to as NMF-H2. It was also oxidized in air at 600 ℃ to form a semi-hollow NiO crosslinking phase and subsequently reduced in H2 at 300℃, forming a regenerated porous Ni foam material, referred to as NMF-O2/H2. The composition and morphology of all materials were investigated by XRD and SEM, respectively. The SEM image reveals that, in the porous NMF-O2/H2, the cross-linked meso-wire structure was maintained, and the average pore size is between 0.5-5 μm. Electrochemical analysis show that the OER activity of the Ni foam catalysts follows NMF-O2/H2 > NMF-H2 > raw NMF. In addition to the NMF-based materials, a Ni/Ni(OH)2 layer-structured electrocatalyst, referred to as NiDHBT, was also developed using a dynamic hydrogen bubble templating (DHBT) method. First, the 3D-porous micro Ni/Zn nanoplatelets were constructed in a two-step DHBT deposition method. The Ni/Zn foil was used as a scaffold, featured with the open porous structure and high surface area, for the subsequent electrodeposition of Ni(OH)2. Then, the Zn was etched from the as-prepared Ni/Zn/Ni(OH)2 nanocomposite to obtain the NiDHBT. The catalytic performance of the NiDHBT toward OER reaction was evaluated, and the optimal catalysts developed from different electro deposition potentials were determined. On the recognition of the high catalytic activity of NMF-O2/H2 and NiDHBT, porous structured FeOx-Nickel meso-foam, referred to as Fe@NMF-O2/H2, and FeOx- Ni/Ni(OH)2 layered-structure materials, referred to as Fe@NiDHBT, was further developed to explore the benefits of FeOx deposition for its OER catalytic performance. The deposition of FeOx is achieved by physical mixing FeOx colloid with NMF-O2/H2 and NiDHBT, and the electrochemical performance of these materials was examined in 1 M KOH. Among the developed materials, the best performing catalyst is Fe@NiDHBT synthesized by loading FeOx colloid onto the NiDHBT support. The overpotential for Fe@NiDHBT to reach 10 mA·cm-2 is 247mV, and the corresponding Tafel slope is 48.10mV·dec-1. Therefore, it was concluded that the FeOx¬¬ loading modification is an effective strategy to improve the OER activity of Ni foam-based catalysts.

The upward trend in internal combustion engine efficiency is likely driven by the depletion of fossil fuels. Since no replacement in sight can deliver energy comparable to the conventional oil, there is a need to use it more rationally and effectively. Thermal barrier coatings have been seen for a long time as a solutionto increase the thermal efficiency of gas turbine engines but suffer from the lackof strong applicability in internal combustion engines. This is due to the different restrictions when comparing the environment on the gas turbines and in internal combustion engines. To overcome this problem and, at the same time, expand the application field of thermal barrier coatings, more efforts need to be devoted.In this work, different top coat materials using various deposition techniques were evaluated and categorized in three different thermal barrier coating (TBC) architectures. The first was the lamellar yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) top coat deposited by atmospheric plasma spray (APS), used as a reference sample. The second architecture was a columnar suspension plasma spray (SPS) TBC with YSZ and gadolinium zirconate (GZO) top coat. The SPS process can produce avariety of microstructures, and they were, for the first time, tested in an internal combustion engine. The third architecture was an SPS top coat, with an additional layer on the top, called a sealing layer of either metallic or ceramic material, both never investigated in a diesel engine application earlier. For the thermophysical properties investigation, a combination of laser flashanalysis (LFA) and modeling with object-oriented finite element (OOF) was employed to understand the properties in all the applications. The performance of the coatings was evaluated in two different ways, by thermal cyclic tests, basedon the TBCs behavior under cyclic thermal loads and by single-cylinder engine experiment. The characterization of the coatings was done by scanning electron microscope (SEM) before and after the thermal cyclic tests.The performance properties were correlated with coatings microstructure and thermophysical properties. It was shown that a columnar TBC produced by SPS had a superior engine efficiency in the single cylinder engine experiment.

Petroleum powered vehicles emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) through combustion that contributes to the pollution of the environment. A technique in the 1970s was developed to decrease these emissions, especially for nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphuric oxides (SOx) which is called exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The technique works by recirculating a portion of the combusted gas back into the engine, this limits the NOx and SOx emissions because of lower temperatures and less available oxygen. The problems that follow these effects is the formation and condensation of acids that corrode the material of the EGR system, which are created by many different reactions. It is of importance to understand how the compounds in the EGR system behaves through analysis of authentic and simulated condensates, which is why a quantitative method for these compounds are of interest. The aim of the project was to develop a simple quantitative analysis method for formic acid, acetic acid, and lactic acid in aqueous solution, which was done at Gränges Sweden AB. The technique used for detection and quantification was gas chromatography (GC) coupled to a flame ionization detector (FID) and a water compatible polyethylene glycol (PEG) column. Fractional factorial design (FFD) was used for determination of adequate operating parameters of the GC method and the sample preparation. Sample preparation only required filtration and pH adjustment prior to direct aqueous injection (DAI) to the chromatographic instrument. Detection of the analytes was very difficult because of non-compatibility with the FID, and quantification of asymmetric peak shapes made this problem worse, omitting lactic acid from further analysis. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) was 490 and 1640 ppm for formic acid and 120 and 400 ppm for acetic acid, with an injection volume of 0.3 μL and split ratio 10:1. Limits were too high for every EGR sample leaving no peaks detected for the sample preparation used. Further development should be done with complementary techniques and sample reprocessing in order to quantify the compounds.