Psalms using the language of enmity present a challenge for Christians who wish to use these psalms as prayer. This study investigates the language of enmity in Psalms 110, 119, 129, 137, 139 and 149 as Christian prayer and beyond the normal form category of lament or complaint of the individual. An argument is proposed to understand Book V of the Psalter as an integral unit, which editors have arranged to represent the post-exilic early restoration period. The study begins with an exegesis of each psalm and seeks to determine the perceived suffering of the psalmist(s) at the hands of enemies and the meaning of the responses to these adversaries. It then moves to a limited historical survey of how commentators through Church history have perceived the suffering and responses in these psalms which use language of enmity. This historical survey is used to correct or clarify the findings in the exegesis. In the third movement of this thesis, the results of the individual exegesis and historical survey of Psalms 110, 119, 129, 137, 139 and 149 are compared in order to elucidate the meaning of the language of enmity. The findings suggest that the language of enmity represents images of judgment on a recalcitrant adversary. The psalms are also investigated as prayers and as normative scripture. The use of the language of enmity in these psalms suggests a use of language that differs from normal use. In this regard the rhetorical device of synecdoche is most helpful in explaining how the texts function. The basis for the language of enmity seems to be the unchanging nature of moral evil. The study then investigates the psalms as canonical, normative prayer in order to move towards developing a theology of God’s just dealing with people and his people in particular. In this regard the psalms are approached as prayer, regardless of the voice in which they were composed. It is suggested that the text as normative prayer allows the psalmist, God, and the pray-er to inhabit and celebrate the same sacred time and space. Of particular concern is how each psalm speaks to the issue of how God engages with moral evil and the question of what can be known about moral evil. The findings suggest that these psalms are an invaluable spiritual resource for the church and should remain unaltered in their use as Christian private and public prayer. / PhD (Old Testament), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus in cooperation with Greenwich School of Theology, 2015

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La démonstration de l’immortalité de l’âme dans les dialogues de Platon, notamment dans le Phédon, a été abondamment commentée au point d’avoir longtemps servi de référence majeure sur cette question. Cette thèse se propose donc de « déconstruire » le propos platonicien relatif à la survie de l’âme afin de découvrir si cette conception n’est pas sous-tendue par des intuitions spontanées que peut avoir tout homme lorsqu’il prend conscience de son être propre et qui, précisément, l’amènent à se penser doté d’une âme survivant à son corps ; que nous dit Platon, explicitement ou non, sur ces intuitions ? De quelles vérités humaines les mythes eschatologiques se font-ils l’écho ? Pour tenter de répondre à cette problématique, la thèse s’ouvre sur une première partie spécifiquement consacrée à un commentaire des développements platoniciens relatifs à l’immortalité de l’âme, ne passant sous silence ni le contexte dans lequel Platon situait ses dialogues ni son projet philosophique, éthique et politique global. Sur la base des conclusions de cette exégèse, s’engage ensuite une analyse des rapports qu’entretient la thèse de la survie post corporis mortem de l’âme avec les principaux aspects de la spécificité humaine mis en jeu dans la démonstration platonicienne ; la dernière partie, enfin, tente d’opérer la synthèse des idées développées antérieurement et propose quelques hypothèses pour identifier les sentiments se situant à la source de la croyance en l’immortalité de l’âme et déterminer si Platon faisait siens ces sentiments ou non : ainsi, la boucle sera bouclée et cette thèse devrait donner de quoi répondre à certaines idées reçues relatives à Platon. / The demonstration of immortality of soul in Plato’s dialogues, notably in Phædo, has been the object of many commentaries : as a result, it has been for a long time the major reference about this question. So, this thesis’ purpose is accomplishing the « deconstruction » of Plato’s writings about soul’s survival : when he begins to know his own being, every human might have spontaneous intuitions which make he thinks his soul survive after body’s death. Maybe such intuitions underlie this concept in Plato’s dialogues : so, what does Plato, explicitly or not, tell about these intuitions ? Which human features underlie his eschatological myths ? In order to try to answer these questions, the actual commentary of Plato’s explanations concering immortality of soul will be the object of thesis’ first part : this commentary will forget neither the context of dialogues nor Plato’s philosophical, ethical and politcal whole plans. This exegesis will lay the foundations for an analysis of links betweem the concept of soul’s survival after body’s death and human specificity’s major aspects which Plato mentions in his explanations ; the last part will try to summarize what has been previously presented and will propose some hypothesis in order to identify human feelings which constitute the source of belief in soul’s immortality and to see if these feelings were Plato’s ones or not. As a result, the thesis will come full circle and might contradict some wrongly widespread ideas concerning Plato.

Two long-lived halogen radionuclides (36Cl, T1/2 = 301 kyr, and 129I, T1/2 = 15.7 Myr) have been studied by means of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) at the Uppsala Tandem Laboratory. The 36Cl measurements in natural samples using a medium-sized tandem accelerator (~1 MeV/amu) have been considered. A gas-filled magnetic spectrometer (GFM) was proposed for the separation of 36Cl from its isobar, 36S. Semi-empirical Monte-Carlo ion optical calculations were conducted to define optimal conditions for separating 36Cl and 36S. A 180° GFM was constructed and installed at the dedicated AMS beam line. 129I has been measured in waters from the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans. Most of the 129I currently present in the Earth's surface environment can be traced back to liquid and gaseous releases from the nuclear reprocessing facilities at Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France). The anthropogenic 129I inventory in the central Arctic Ocean was found to increase proportionally to the integrated 129I releases from these reprocessing facilities. The interaction and origin of water masses in the region have been clearly distinguished with the help of 129I labeling. Predictions based on a compartment model calculation showed that the Atlantic Ocean and deep Arctic Ocean are the major sinks for the reprocessed 129I. The variability in 129I concentration measured in seawater along a transect from the Baltic Sea to the North Atlantic suggests strong enrichment in the Skagerrak–Kattegat basin. The 129I inventory in the Baltic and Bothnian Seas is equal to ~0.3% of the total liquid releases from the reprocessing facilities. A lake sediment core sampled in northeastern Ireland was analyzed for 129I to study the history of the Sellafield releases, in particular the nuclear accident of 1957. High 129I concentration was observed corresponding to 1990 and later, while no indication of the accident was found. The results of this thesis research clearly demonstrate the uniqueness and future potential of 129I as a tracer of processes in both marine and continental archives.

Radionuclides, 129I and 239,240Pu, are major products or by-products of nuclear fission and among the top risk drivers for waste disposal at the Savannah River Sites (SRS) and Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Sites (RFETS), respectively, due to their perceived mobility in the environment, excessive inventory, toxicity, and long half-life. The objective of this study is to investigate the role of natural organic matter in retarding or facilitating the migration of 129I and 239,240Pu in the Department of Energy (DOE) sites. Measurements of 127I and 129I in humic acids (HAs) and fulvic acids (FAs) obtained by five successive alkaline, two glycerol and one citric acid-alkaline extractions, demonstrated that these extractable humic substances (HS) together account for 54-56 percent and 46 percent of the total 127I and 129I in the soil, respectively. The variations among 127I and 129I concentrations, isotopic ratios (129I/127I), chemical properties of all these humic substances indicated iodine was bound to a small-size aromatic subunit (~10 kDa), while the large-size subunit (~90 kDa), which likely linked the small-size unit through some weak chemical forces, determined the relative mobility of iodine bound to organic matter. Soil resuspension experiments simulating surface runoff or stormflow and erosion events were conducted with soils collected from SRS. Results showed that 72-77 percent of the newly-introduced I- or IO3- were irreversibly sequestered into the organic-rich soil, while the rest was transformed into colloidal and dissolved organo-iodine by the soil. The resulting iodine remobilization contradicts the conventional view that considers only I- or IO3- as the mobile forms. Quantitative structure analysis by 13C DPMAS NMR and solution state 1H NMR on these humic substances indicate that iodine is closely related to the aromatic regions containing esterified products of phenolic and fomic acid or other aliphatic carboxylic acids, amide functionalities, quinone-like structure activated by electron-donating groups (e.g., NH2) or hemicelluloses-lignin-like complex with phenyl-glycosidic linkage. The micro-molecular environment, such as the hydrophobic aliphatic periphery hindering the active aromatic cores and the hydrophilic polysaccharides favoring its accessibility towards hydrophilic iodine species, play another key role in the interactions between iodine and SOM. NMR spectra of the colloidal organic Pu carrier which can potentially be released from the soil during the surface runoff or stormflow showed Pu was transported, at sub-pM concentrations, by a cutin-derived soil degradation products containing siderophore-like moieties and virtually all mobile Pu.

Abstract The present thesis describes a method for characterization of liquid crystals in confined spaces by means of NMR of probe atoms and molecules. 129Xe isotope enriched xenon gas and 13C isotope enriched methyl iodide and methane were used as probes. Behavior of solutes and liquid crystals confined to porous materials was investigated using 129Xe and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Uniaxial nematic liquid crystals Phase 4 and ZLI 1115 were used as a medium. Controlled pore glass with well defined and known properties was used as a porous material. The behavior of liquid crystals and solutes in various different size pores, temperatures and magnetic fields at different solute concentrations was explained. The average pore diameter of the material varied from mesopores to macropores. The studied temperature range covered solid, nematic and isotropic phases of bulk liquid crystals, and the highest magnetic field was 2.5 times stronger than the lowest one used (4.70 T). The chemical shifts, intensities, and line shapes of the resonance signals from the solutes were observed to contain lots of information about the effect of confinement on the state of the liquid crystals. Especially the line shape of the 13C resonances of methyl iodide was observed to be very sensitive to the liquid crystal orientation distribution in the pores. By varying experimental conditions the relative contribution of field and the surface forces of pore walls to the orientation of liquid crystal molecules inside the pores was seen to change quite drastically. In addition, it was also observed that when the sample is cooled very rapidly, xenon atoms do not squeeze out from the freezing medium but they are occluded inside the solid lattice, and their chemical shift is very sensitive to crystal structure. Furthermore, because solutes experienced on average isotropic environment inside the smallest pores, isotropic value of the shielding tensor could be determined at exactly the same condition and temperature as anisotropic counterpart between the pore particles. Thus, for the first time in the solution state, shielding anisotropies could be determined as a function of temperature.

En el gen de la proteïna priònica, o PRNP, hem observat que el particular patró de variació que hem trobat basant-nos en dades de seqüenciació en humans es deu a selecció positiva, i que el mètode utilitzat per detectar selecció és crític. Utilitzant dades basades en SNPs es pot introduir un biaix al aplicar tests de neutralitat basats en diversitat de seqüències, i això pot portar a conclusions errònies. A més, hem vist que els polimorfismes en els codons 129 i 219 presenten gran diferències de freqüència en diferents poblacions humanes i també hem vist que aquestes posicions estan fixades en ximpanzés. La variació trobada en controls ha estat comparada amb el patró de variació existent en pacients per la mateixa regió. La reseqüenciació del gen PRNP en un gran nombre de mostres humanes i de ximpanzés ens ha permès obtenir un gran nombre d´informació d´aquest gen. / In the prion gene or PRNP, we have observed that the particular pattern of variation that we have found in this gene based on sequencing data in humans is due to positive selection, and that the method and the approach used to detect this selection critical. Ascertainment bias can be introduced by using SNP data and applying neutrality tests based on sequence diversity, therefore leading to anomalous conclusions being drawn. Moreover, we have seen that polymorphisms in codon 129 and 219 have big differences in frequency in different human populations and we have also seen that these positions are fixed in chimpanzees. The normal variation that we found in controls have been then compared with patients for the same region. The resequencing of PRNP in a very large sample of humans and chimpanzees has provided a great deal of information on this gene.

Thesis (Ph.D.); Submitted to the University of California, Berkeley, CA (US); 21 Dec 2004. / Published through the Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information. "LBNL--56768" Urban, Jeffry Todd. USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (US) 12/21/2004. Report is also available in paper and microfiche from NTIS.

Memoria (licenciado en ciencias jurídicas y sociales) / La imposición de un Caudal Ecológico Mínimo (CEM) en el acto administrativo que autoriza el traslado del ejercicio de un derecho de aprovechamiento de Aguas (DAA) es un tema controvertido en instancias administrativas, judiciales y en la literatura doctrinaria de Derecho de Aguas. Sin embargo, no ha sido analizado desde una perspectiva del Derecho Público, lo que puede tener importantes consecuencias, tanto en la limitación de las facultades de la administración sectorial, concerniente al Derecho Administrativo; como en la efectiva protección del recurso natural, concerniente al Derecho Ambiental. El presente ensayo explora el tratamiento sobre el Caudal Ecológico Mínimo que ha hecho la literatura ambiental y sectorial en Chile, así como la aplicación que se le ha dado por la Dirección General de Aguas. En este trabajo argumentamos tres cosas, en primer lugar, que la interpretación amplia del dispositivo que ha hecho la Dirección General de Aguas (DGA) en favor de asignar un CEM a los DAA, ante un traslado de su ejercicio, no se condice con la literalidad del artículo 129 bis 1 del Código de Aguas; en segundo lugar, que siendo acertado el intento de la administración por dejar el tenor literal de la disposición legal por una interpretación que sea coherente con el sistema (maximizando la aplicación del dispositivo en consideración al deber constitucional del organismo, sobre la protección de los recursos naturales y medio ambiente), tal solución falla al contradecir una serie de normas elementales para la disciplina; por este motivo y en tercer lugar, proponemos una interpretación alternativa, que permite mediante la legítima aplicación de las potestades implícitas otorgadas por la propia normativa sectorial y ambiental vigente, arribar a un resultado que haga efectiva la conservación del recurso, sin renunciar a la coherencia dogmática de las instituciones del Derecho de Agua.

Text in Afrikaans / In hierdie verhandeling ontleed ek die oproeping van ʼn verband op ʼn onroerende saak in die Suid-Afrikaanse reg. Indien ʼn verbandskuldenaar wanpresteer, kan die verbandskuldeiser sy beperkte saaklike reg afdwing deur die verband op te roep ten einde die uitstaande skuld te delg. Om dit te bereik, word die sekerheidsobjek op ʼn eksekusieverkoping te gelde gemaak, nadat die regte prosedure gevolg is. Die oproepingsproses is in die laaste dekade ingrypend verander, grotendeels as gevolg van artikel 26 van die Grondwet, 1996, en artikels 129 en 130 van die National Credit Act 34 van 2005. Die volgende stadiums in die oproepingsproses word onderskei: die voorverhoorprosedure; jurisdiksiebepaling; die hofprosedure; beslaglegging en die eksekusieverkoping. Wetgewing en regspraak het onlangs ingrypende veranderings ten aansien van die voorverhoorprosedure en die hofprosedure teweeggebring. Alhoewel die oproepingsproses tans bevredigend deur wetgewing en in die regspraak gereël word, is daar nog verontrustende aspekte van eksekusieverkopings wat die wetgewer se aandag verdien. / In this dissertation I analyse the calling up of a mortgage bond over immovable property under South-African law. If a mortgagor defaults, the mortgagee can enforce his limited real right by calling up the mortgage bond to satisfy the outstanding debt. To accomplish this, the secured property will be sold at an execution sale, after the correct procedure has been followed. Over the past decade, foreclosure proceedings have undergone significant changes, largely owing to section 26 of the Constitution, 1996, and sections 129 and 130 of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005. The following stages in the foreclosure process are identified: pre-trial debt enforcement procedure; determination of jurisdiction; court procedure; attachment and execution sale. Both the pre-trial debt enforcement procedure and the court procedure have recently been substantially amended by legislation and case law. Although legislation and case law currently regulate the foreclosure process satisfactorily, some disturbing aspects of execution sales remain and these deserve the legislator’s attention. / Private Law / LL.M.