<p>Second language (L2) writing teaching and research in China have enjoyed a rich history and have had remarkable achievements. However, the extensive L2 writing literature created in China has not yet been analyzed comprehensively from theoretical, methodological, and philosophical perspectives. This research synthesis provides a metadisciplinary and historical analysis of empirical studies on L2 writing in China that were conducted over the past 40 years by concentrating on the theoretical, methodological, and philosophical aspects of this scholarship. This study was set out to answer three research questions: 1) what major theories have been used in L2 writing research in China, and what changes can be identified regarding theory usage; 2) what major methodologies and methods have been adopted in L2 writing research in China, and what changes can be identified regarding methodology usage; and 3) how do theoretical and methodological changes reflect the changes in the philosophical bases of L2 writing inquiry in China?</p> <p> The data in this study are 660 empirical research articles on L2 writing that were published in 15 top peer-reviewed applied linguistics journals in China from 1978 to 2017. Each article was read carefully by the researcher to identify its theory and methodology and was classified into one of the four categories, <i>Instruction</i>, <i>Writer</i>, <i>Text</i>, and <i>Assessment</i>, based on its primary research focus. Theory identification followed a data-driven thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006), meaning that the researcher drew on exact information provided in each article as much as possible. Methodology identification framework was developed by adapting similar frameworks in the field (Hyland, 2016; Polio & Friedman, 2017). Disciplinary roots of the identified theories and research approaches of the collected studies were also identified and analyzed. All identified information was stored on a spreadsheet for reporting and analysis.</p> <p> Regarding theory usage, the results show that a wide range of theories have been used in empirical L2 writing studies in China. Over 40 theories were identified in each of the following three subject matter categories: <i>Instruction</i>, <i>Writer</i>, and <i>Text</i>; 15 theories were identified in <i>Assessment</i>. In <i>Writer</i> and <i>Assessment</i>, more theories with cognitive orientations were adopted. In <i>Instruction</i>, theories with social orientations outnumbered theories with cognitive and socio-cognitive orientations. In <i>Text</i>, functional orientations were more prominent. With regard to theoretical changes, there were signs indicating increase in socially-oriented and socio-cognitively-oriented theories in <i>Instruction</i> and <i>Writer</i>; however, the majority of the studies were conducted under the process-centered tradition. The methodology identification results reveal that three methodologies were adopted by empirical L2 writing studies in China: Experimentation, Textual Analysis, and Case Study. Experimentation was the most frequently adopted methodology in studies in <i>Instruction</i>, <i>Writer</i>, and <i>Assessment</i>. Textual Analysis was adopted the most in studies in <i>Text</i>. Overall, Writing Test, Written Text, Interview, and Survey were the most frequently used methods in all empirical L2 writing studies across subject matter categories. The results also show an underrepresented status of qualitative approaches in empirical L2 writing studies in China. No significant change was found regarding methodology/method adoption over time.</p> <p> Based on the results, I argue that empirical L2 writing research in China largely remains in the positivist paradigm, although there were signs indicating a potential positivist to relativist paradigm shift. I also argue that, considering the uniqueness of language studies, the meta-paradigmatic accommodation perspective seems to work better than the paradigm shift perspective in characterizing the developmental trajectory of L2 writing research in China. By implication, this study increases L2 writing researchers’ metadisciplinary awareness of the current theoretical, methodological, and philosophical status of empirical L2 writing research in China and provides research gatekeepers with concrete evidence for making better-informed decisions on actions toward greater disciplinary balance and integration.<a></a></p>

Since its establishment, the study of environmental literature has included a great deal of research which has based its arguments on assumptions that state that climate fiction contains persuasive elements that are impactful on readers. The problem with these assumptions is that they do not offer any empirical proof to demonstrate their arguments. This thesis offers an empirical study of the reception of Lydia Millet’s short story “Zoogoing” and examines whether or not the story is able to generate an animal welfare consciousness in the context of climate change within an audience that includes 10 participants from Bahrain. This project was conducted via two surveys on SurveySparrow, one before and the other after the participants had read the story. From the findings, it was revealed that the extinction narrative was able to help the readers conceptualize future ecological possibilities. Although the narrative was able to heighten the participants’ consciousness about environmental destruction, their concern for animal conservation remained the same. What was speculated from the analysis in this thesis was that the story had lacked a representation of animals that would focus the participants’ gaze on animal extinction.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / The effective and efficient delivery of social services in South Africa has suffered as a result of the apartheid policies and practices. Now that we have legitimate political structures in our country, social workers in local authorities have the opportunity to take their rightful place in our social service delivery system. In order to enhance the quality of life in South Africa, we must ensure that people are not serviced at a distance. The broad intention of this study is to critically examine social work practice in local authorities in South Africa in order to identify the pertinent elements of a model of practice and to clarify the role of the local authority social worker. Five theoretical issues are identified within structural Marxism which was selected as the theoretical orientation for this study. These are the individual-society relationship, basic needs and services, social change, community participation and professionalism. The literature review of the h-uman services rendered by local authorities in the United Kingdom and the U.~nite-d-S-ta-tes of America, and in South Africa. of which there is a Raucity of research, sensi-ti-ze-d-the res-earcher to the-relevant issues and debates, and informed the empirical study.Ten (10) directors and fifty (50) social work practitioners of social services departments completed the mailed questionnaires. The response rate was, 24,39% and 27,47%, respectively. The empirical data has provided important information about the rationale and types of social services provided by local authorities in 1992-1993. To varying degrees, casework, group work, research and community work/development are practised. While the latter method was purported by many respondents to be their priority, casework was found to be the most popular method. These services were often provided because no other services existed in the area or were inaccessible. In most cases, the social services departments, unfortunately, did not have a mission statement nor terms of reference to guide their planning and interventions. As the majority of the South African population were excluded from the political process, local authority structures were discredited by many people and this caused anxiety among many practitioners and tensions with the communities. There was a high level of co-operation between social services departments and their respective health departments. The conclusions drawn from this study are that local authorities should provide social services through a comprehensive social services department which should include, among other, the health department; and that local government is an important site for the practice of developmental social work. Other researchers could build on this foundation so as to develop clearer policy and practice guidelines for this field of speciality.

LoRaWAN is a wireless network technology based on the LoRa modulation technology. When planning such a network, it is important to estimate the network’s coverage, which can be done by calculating path loss. To do this, one can utilize empirical models of radio wave propagation. Previous research has investigated the accuracy of such empirical models for LoRa inside cities. However, as the accuracy of these models is heavily dependent on the exact characteristics of the environment, it is of interest to validate these results. In addition, the effect of base station elevation on the models’ accuracy has yet to be researched. Following the problems stated above, the purpose of this study is to investigate the accuracy of empirical models of radio wave propagation for LoRa in an urban environment. More specifically, we investigate the accuracy of the models and the effect of base station elevation on the models’ accuracy. The latter is the main contribution of this study. To perform these investigations, a quantitative experiment was conducted in the city of Jönköping, Sweden. In the experiment a base station was positioned at elevations of 30, 23, and 15m. The path loss was measured from 20 locations around the base station for each level of elevation. The measured path loss was then compared to predictions from three popular empirical models: the Okumura-Hata model, the COST 231-Walfisch-Ikegami model, and the 3GPP UMa NLOS model. Our analysis showed a clear underestimation of the path loss for all models. We conclude that for an environment and setup similar to ours, models underestimate the path loss by approximately 20dB. They can be improved by adding a constant correction value, resulting in a mean absolute error of at least 3,7-5,6dB. We also conclude that the effect of base station elevation varies greatly between different models. The 3GPP model underestimated the path loss equally for all elevations and could therefore easily be improved by a constant correction value. This resulted in a mean absolute error of approximately 4dB for all elevations.

Herbage and cattle production in semi-arid regions are primarily controlled by climate variation particularly rainfall variability and secondarily by disturbances such as drought, grazing and fire. These factors interact at different spatial and temporal scales in a complex manner difficult to observe or comprehend and, reduce availability and quality of herbage and cattle productivity. Variables for quantifying rangeland productivity are thus rarely available and unreliable yet options for sustainable management are limited. Grazing experiments have provided useful insight about ecological and management factors involved in rangeland functioning, but they have limited scope to deal with high environmental variation. This highlights the need for a systems approach for monitoring rangeland and cattle productivity at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales to enable productivity to be maximised whilst risk to climate variation is minimised. This study explored two broad objectives: to determine the ranch-scale impacts of rainfall variability and drought on herbaceous aboveground biomass (AGB) using optical remote sensing; and to parameterise, evaluate and apply a systems model, the Sustainable Grazing Systems (SGS) whole farm model to complement grazing experiments in assessing the effects of grazing strategies on beef cattle production. To determine rainfall variability impacts, twenty regression models were firstly developed between measured herbaceous AGB and, classical and extended multispectral vegetation indices (MVIs) derived from a Landsat 8 image. End-of-season herbaceous AGB was predicted with high accuracy (r2 range = 0.55 to 0.71; RMSE range = 840 to 1480 kgha-1). The most accurate model was used to construct a regression between rainfall and AGB derived from peak-season Landsat images available between 1992 and 2017. Standardised precipitation index and standardised anomalies of herbaceous AGB production were then used in a convergence of evidence approach to determine the response of AGB to rainfall variability and drought intensity. Total wet season rainfall revealed high variability (33 to 41 % CV) and subsequent herbaceous AGB production were 18 to 35 % more variable. Spatial heterogeneity of AGB production across herbaceous communities were high and deviated from mean AGB by 51 to 69 %. Landscape-level temporal variation of AGB production remained stable despite the increase of climate variability experienced in the region in the past 50 years. Climate inputs and parameter sets for upper-, mid- and foot- slope land types and key grass species, Urochloa mosambicensis and Eragrostis curvula were developed by integrating spatial data with previous soil surveys and extensive reviews of published experiments. A simulation experiment was conducted between 1992 and 2017 for all combinations of land types and grass species to analyse the extent of improvement resulting from parameter adjustments. The SGS model predicted the growth pattern known for grasses native to dry regions of southern Africa. The model represented measured herbaceous biomass moderately well (r2 = 0.57), at low average error (RMSE, 820 kg DM ha-1) despite huge discrepancies in summary statistics for measured (mean, 3877 kg DM ha-1) and simulated (mean, 3071 kg DM ha-1) biomass and residuals. Model predictions were also significantly correlated with remotely sensed AGB (r2 = 0.46) at reasonable overall performance error (RMSE, 981 kg DM ha-1). The integrated workflow developed for parameterising and calibrating the SGS pasture-simulation model can benefit model users in data-constrained environments. Animal growth parameters specific to Brahman weaner steers were defined in the SGS model to enable evaluation of impacts of recommended (10 haLU-1) and other three stocking rates (7, 15 and 20 haLU-1) and multi-paddock grazing systems (2-, 3- and 4- paddocks per herd) on rangeland productivity. Overall, there were no observable differences in herbage production and dry matter intake irrespective of stocking rate and multi-paddock grazing system. But stocking rate effects on animal production were more pronounced compared to multi-paddock grazing systems. To maximise cattle productivity in semi-arid rangelands, management should be emphasised on manipulation of stocking rates over multi-paddock grazing systems. Keywords Rangeland monitoring, climate risk, sustainability, animal productivity, grazing strategies / Thesis (PhD (Animal Production Management))--University of Pretoria, 2020. / National Research Foundation of South Africa / University of Pretoria Department of Research and Innovation Support / Animal and Wildlife Sciences / PhD / Unrestricted

The subject of my diploma thesis is motivation and stimulation of employees in the Otis Company. This thesis is divided into two parts and includes theoretical and practical elaboration of the issue. The first part provides a theoretical basis related to motivation, stimulating and remuneration of employees. In the practical part I analysed the current situation of the chosen company. Based on detected results I identified key problem areas and I made a proposal for improving of existing incentive system.

The main purpose of this diploma thesis is to check up and compare empirical formulae (Hazen, Slichter, Terzaghi, Beyer, Zauerbrej, Krüger, Kozeny, Zunker, Zamarin, USBR, Pavčič) for determining hydraulic conductivity, which are mostly publicated in different and dimensionally inhomogenous forms. The importance of an accurate determination of hydraulic conductivity and the derivation of a general formula for determining hydraulic conductivity are listed in the first part of this diploma thesis. Assessment methodology and empirical formulae in dimensional homogenous form are described in the following part. Evaluating and comparing of empirical formulae is mentioned in the last part. According to the results of this diploma thesis, the best empirical formula for determinig and estimating hydraulic conductivity is Hazen formula. Formula with the widest range of validity is Slichter formula.

The full enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that began on May 25, 2018 forced any organization that collects and/or processes personal data from European Union citizens to comply with a series of stringent and comprehensive privacy regulations. Many software organizations struggled to comply with the entirety of the GDPR's regulations both leading up and even after the GDPR deadline. Previous studies on the subject of the GDPR have primarily focused on finding implications for users and organizations using surveys or interviews. However, there is a dearth of in-depth studies that investigate compliance practices and compliance challenges in software organizations. In particular, small and medium enterprises are often neglected in these previous studies, despite small and medium enterprises representing the majority of organizations in the EU. Furthermore, organizations that practice continuous integration have largely been ignored in studies on GDPR compliance. Using design science methodology, we conducted an in-depth study over the span of 20 months regarding GDPR compliance practices and challenges in collaboration with a small, startup organization. Our first step helped identify our collaborator's business problems. Subsequently, we iteratively developed two artifacts to address those business problems: a set of privacy requirements operationalized from GDPR principles, and an automated GDPR tool that tests these GDPR-derived privacy requirements. This design science approach resulted in five implications for research and for practice about ongoing challenges to compliance. For instance, our research reveals that GDPR regulations can be partially operationalized and tested through automated means, which is advantageous for achieving long term compliance. In contrast, more research is needed to create more efficient and effective means to disseminate and manage GDPR knowledge among software developers. / Graduate

Dans le chapitre introductif, nous dressons une étude comparée des approches en économétrie et en apprentissage statistique sur les questions de l'estimation et de l'inférence en statistique.Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous nous intéressons à une classe générale de modèles de variables instrumentales nonparamétriques. Nous généralisons la procédure d'estimation de Otsu (2011) en y ajoutant un terme de régularisation. Nous prouvons la convergence de notre estimateur pour la norme L2 de Lebesgue.Dans le troisième chapitre, nous montrons que lorsque les données ne sont pas indépendantes et identiquement distribuées (i.i.d) mais simplement jointement échangeables, une version modifiée du processus empirique converge faiblement vers un processus gaussien sous les mêmes conditions que dans le cas i.i.d. Nous obtenons un résultat similaire pour une version adaptée du processus empirique bootstrap. Nous déduisons de nos résultats la normalité asymptotique de plusieurs estimateurs non-linéaires ainsi que la validité de l'inférence basée sur le bootstrap. Nous revisitons enfin l'article empirique de Santos Silva et Tenreyro (2006).Dans le quatrième chapitre, nous abordons la question de l'inférence pour des ratios d'espérances. Nous trouvons que lorsque le dénominateur ne tend pas trop vite vers zéro quand le nombre d'observations n augmente, le bootstrap nonparamétrique est valide pour faire de l'inférence asymptotique. Dans un second temps, nous complétons un résultat d'impossibilité de Dufour (1997) en montrant que quand n est fini, il est possible de construire des intervalles de confiance qui ne sont pas pathologiques sont certaines conditions sur le dénominateur.Dans le cinquième chapitre, nous présentons une commande Stata qui implémente les estimateurs proposés par de Chaisemartin et d'Haultfoeuille (2018) pour mesurer plusieurs types d'effets de traitement très étudiés en pratique. / In the introductory chapter, we compare views on estimation and inference in the econometric and statistical learning disciplines.In the second chapter, our interest lies in a generic class of nonparametric instrumental models. We extend the estimation procedure in Otsu (2011) by adding a regularisation term to it. We prove the consistency of our estimator under Lebesgue's L2 norm.In the third chapter, we show that when observations are jointly exchangeable rather than independent and identically distributed (i.i.d), a modified version of the empirical process converges weakly towards a Gaussian process under the same conditions as in the i.i.d case. We obtain a similar result for a modified version of the bootstrapped empirical process. We apply our results to get the asymptotic normality of several nonlinear estimators and the validity of bootstrap-based inference. Finally, we revisit the empirical work of Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2006).In the fourth chapter, we address the issue of conducting inference on ratios of expectations. We find that when the denominator tends to zero slowly enough when the number of observations n increases, bootstrap-based inference is asymptotically valid. Secondly, we complement an impossibility result of Dufour (1997) by showing that whenever n is finite it is possible to construct confidence intervals which are not pathological under some conditions on the denominator.In the fifth chapter, we present a Stata command which implements estimators proposed in de Chaisemartin et d'Haultfoeuille (2018) to measure several types of treatment effects widely studied in practice.

In this study, linear and non-linear models were trained on real data to mimic the relationship between household electricity consumption and indoor temperature, in the rooms of an apartment in downtown Stockholm. The aim was to better understand this relationship and to distinguish any divergence between the different rooms. With data from two weeks of measurements, the models proved to perform well when tested on validation data for almost all rooms, only showing performance dips for the middle room. A noticeable correlation between the electricity consumption and the indoor temperature was observed for all rooms except the bedroom. However, the benefits of using this information to predict the indoor temperature are limited and differ between the rooms. The household electricity consumption primarily brought beneficial information to the kitchen models, where most of the heat generating appliances were located. It was found that linear models were sufficient to represent the thermal systems of the rooms, performing equally well and often better than non-linear models.