Este trabalho visa contribuir para o conhecimento dos consumos de energia em uma planta típica de produção de biodiesel. A energia consumida no processo de produção de um combustível deve ser compatível com aquela por ele disponibilizada em suas utilizações. Assim, avaliou-se a energia térmica teórica em kJ/kg envolvida na produção de uma unidade de massa de biodiesel comparando-a com o seu poder calorífico inferior (PCI). Às operações unitárias deste processo, foram aplicados os balanços de materiais e de energia como método para calcular a carga térmica em cada operação para determinar o consumo de energia. Para tanto foi necessário encontrar uma fórmula molecular representativa para o óleo e uma para o biodiesel, com cálculos partindo da massa molar de cada um. A aplicação dos cálculos do balanço de entalpia em algumas operações unitárias dependia dos valores das entalpias de formação do óleo e do biodiesel, que foram calculadas pelo princípio de Hess, através das reações de combustão. O consumo de vapor da planta de biodiesel foi calculado através da massa de vapor consumida em todo o processo sendo comparada com o consumo de biodiesel necessário para a produção desse vapor. O processo analisado consome 25% do biodiesel produzido para gerar suas necessidades de aquecimento, confirmando a utilização do biodiesel como combustível em termos energéticos. / This work aims at contributing to the knowledge of energy consumption in a typical plant of biodiesel production. The energy consumed in the production of fuel must be compatible to the one available in its updating. Therefore, the theoretical thermal energy involved in the production of a biodiesel mass unit in kJ/kg has been evaluated compared to its lower heat value (LHV). To the unitary operations of this process, the balance of materials and energy has been applied as a method to calculate the thermal charge in each operation to determine the energy consumption. To do so, it was necessary to find representative molecular formulas for both oil and biodiesel, with calculations based on the molar mass of each. The application of the calculations of the enthalpy balance in some unitary operations depended on the values of the formation enthalpies of oil and biodiesel, which have been calculated through the principle of Hess, by means of the reactions of combustion. The consumption of steam from the biodiesel plant has been calculated through the steam mass consumed all over the process being compared to the necessary consumption of biodiesel to produce this steam. The analyzed process consumes 25% of the biodiesel produced to generate its heating necessities, confirming the use of biodiesel as fuel in energy terms.

The objective of this study was to investigate the extent to which small to medium-sized building contractors beneficially utilise the financial management function in their enterprises to improve and ensure business sustainability. Financial management focuses on the principles of decision-making, which requires action, without perfect knowledge of the outcome. To effectively execute the financial function, using the primary inputs in decision-making, financial management requires the ability to: understand and interpret financial statements and reports; make reasoned and objective decisions in controlling the operations of the enterprise; have a thorough knowledge of the internal functioning of the enterprise; and have a thorough knowledge of current and expected future economic conditions in the external environment. To do this, requires an effectively applied financial management function in the enterprises, which includes the utilisation of the financial management criteria to ensure business sustainability. However, without an appreciation of what financial management is, how important financial management is, and how financial management must be applied in the enterprise, small to medium-sized building contractors will find it difficult to effectively perform the financial management function and its different activities. It was therefore important to determine how well owners and construction managers of the average small to medium-sized building contractor deal with and utilise the financial management function in their enterprises. Consequently, a survey was carried out amongst small to medium-sized building contractors in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipal (NMMM) area, which revealed information that was used to come to certain conclusions: Firstly, it can be concluded that the financial management function is generally exercised superficially. This is supported by the responses of small to medium-sized building contractors, which implied that more than half the contractors do not fully perform financial management tasks. Secondly, it was concluded that the financial management criteria generally do not play a role in the business sustainability considerations of small to medium-sized building contractors. This is supported by the results, which imply that more than half the contractors do not fully utilise the financial management criteria.

Syftet med studien var att beskriva olika preoperativa informationssätt och hur de påverkar föräldrarnas oro i samband med att deras barn genomgår en operation i generell anestesi. Metoden har utgjorts av en litteraturstudie där datamaterialet har bestått av 15 studier, beskrivande preoperativa informationssätt. Fyra huvudgrupper av informationssätt bildades: skriftlig, visuell, verbal och preoperativa förberedelseprogram. Därefter bildades underkategorier med faktorer som påverkar informationens förutsättningar: operationer, föräldra- och/eller barnanpassad information, barnets ålder, tidpunkt för information, övrig information. Studierna visar att preoperativ information kan minska föräldrarnas oro. Bäst resultat visade interventionsstudierna, med ett mer omfattande preoperativt förberedelseprogram. Att barn och föräldrar får ta del av informationen tillsammans och att den är individuellt anpassad, har också betydelse för föräldrarnas oro.

M.Com. (Transport Economics) / This study deals with the problem of road user cost recovery in a developing country. Two main problems areas have been identified. The first deals with the shortage of funds for financing road infrastructure. Secondly, the responsibility for financing road infrastructure needs to be established. The first objective of the study was to provide a theoretical discussion on the subject of road user cost recovery. The second objective was to establish how much the road users in the Republic of Transkei currently pay for the use of road infrastructure. Thirdly the study wished to establish how much the road 'users should pay, and the final objective was to find methods for u~ilizing existing and new sources for finance. The empirical data for the study was obtained from licence authorities, a border survey, state departments and municipalities in the Republic of Transkei. The literature study revealed that one of the most important decisions to be made in transport policy is the required level of expenditure on road infrastructure. The two techniques that are generally used to determine this level are earmarking of a fixed percentage of the total goverrunent budget for roads and the establishment of a dedicated road fund. The advantages and disadvantages of a road fund are discussed. The approaches that can be used to recover costs from road users may be divided into three categories: - Tax on vehicle usage that varies with the use of road infrastructure. - Methods aimed at vehicle usage which does not vary with the use of road infrastructure. - Methods that are not based on vehicle usage. The Republic of Transkei applies three methods of road user cost recovery, namely fuel tax, licence fees and levies on abnormal loads. These three methods are a combination of all the basic approaches that can be used to recover cost from road users. The N2 national route is identified as the most important road in the Republic of Transkei. The general condition of roads is poor and not enough funds are spent on maintenance. Costs allocated to road users are maintenance costs, capital costs, and administration costs. The existing method of cost recovery from road users is by means of the road fund levy, by licence fees, customs and excise duty and levies on abnormal loads. An evaluation of the existing recovery system in the Republic of Transkei revealed that the system is unfair, total cost is not recovered and there is no dedicated road funding program. In conclusion it is suggested that the following four elements should be added to the existing method of cost recovery from road users levels: - Increase the tax on fuel. - Reviewing of the existing licence fees. . - Implementation of a border toll system. - Levying of a tax on tyres. It is further recommended that a dedicated road fund is started into which all road user levies are paid. The fund should be administrated by either the Department of Works and Energy or the Department of Transport. The fund should be subjected to all the standard accounting and auditing principles.

The recent enlargements of the European Union brought about a strategic shift in the EU’s approach to conflict management and security in the eastern neighbourhood. The Partnership and Co-operation Agreements between the EU and Moldova contained no mention of the Transnistrian dispute, while the agreement between the EU and Geor gia included a vague phrase regarding political dialogue which may include the issue of conflict resolution. The addition of new members to the Union, however, expanded the EU into its neighbourhood and brought closer the unresolved territorial disputes. Concerns that were once further away are now right next door. While the former accession states might have served as buffers to these concerns, they can no longer, as members of the Union, be seen as such. Therefore, there is a greater need to address security issues, such as the ‘frozen conflicts’ bordering the EU. This thesis will examine the evolution of the EU’s responses to security chal lenges in the Eastern neighbourhood, and assess the role the EU plays in addressing these ‘frozen conflicts’ through the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Fur ther, this thesis will argue that the EU has thus far exerted limited direct pressure towards direct resolution of these conflicts and has instead approached regional stability through a variety of other indirect and long term means, such as the pursuit of economic growth and political stability. In particular, the research will look at the security sector reform (SSR) and will focus on the EU’s impact, or Europeanization, in the rule of law and border management sectors of Moldova and Georgia. It will be shown that these two sectors are related to promoting political stability and economic growth, which is in line with the EU’s effort to support development in Moldova and Georgia, and thus indirectly address ‘frozen conflict’ resolution by. altering the incentive structures. This thesis will conclude that the EU does have an impact on the rule of law and border management sectors and subsequently some impact on the ‘frozen conflict’ in Moldova but less so on the conflicts in Georgia. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

System operation contracts were introduced by C. Larman as an application of the notion of Design by Contract (DbC) to the description of high-level system operations derived from requirements. A system operation contract specifies an operation in terms of changes induced in the domain. In the Responsibility Driven Development (RDD) process proposed by Larman, operation contracts play an important role in identifying and assigning systems' responsibilities, and help construct a sound design in later phases. Larman's notation for operation contracts is textual. In this thesis, we propose an alternative visual notation for operation contracts. As part of the process for the definition of this visual notation, we extended and clarified some informal aspects of Larman's notation in order to better accurately capture important aspects of system operations. Our extension allows the specification of data constraints, alternatives, and the temporal dimension of created domain objects, in addition to the description of changes in the state and associations of domain objects. The syntax of the visual notation for operation contracts aims to be cognitively effective and to reuse available UML notation. New visual elements were introduced only in the absence of corresponding elements in the UML. Elements reused from the UML are slightly modified to enhance their cognitive effectiveness. The introduced elements, on the other hand, are designed with the goal of not conflicting with the general theme of the UML. We used The Physics of Notations as a general guide and evaluation criteria. The Physics of Notations is a leading evaluation and design theory for visual models in software engineering. We propose a prototype tool (ViOpContract) that implements the proposed visual notation for operation contracts. ViOpContract is an Eclipse plug-in tool that helps to draw and manage visual operation contracts. The tool provides the capability to generate contracts in textual form from visual contracts.

Many real-world vehicle routing problems are dynamic optimization problems, with customer requests arriving over time, requiring a repeated reoptimization. In this paper, we consider a dynamic vehicle routing problem where one additional customer arrives at a beforehand unknown location when the vehicles are already under way. Our objective is to maximize the probability that the additional customer can be integrated into one of the otherwise fixed tours without violating time constraints. This is achieved by letting the vehicles wait at suitable locations during their tours, thus influencing the position of the vehicles at the time when the new customer arrives. For the cases of one and two vehicles, we derive theoretical results about the best waiting strategies. The general problem is shown to be NP-complete. Several deterministic waiting strategies and an evolutionary algorithm to optimize the waiting strategy are proposed and compared empirically. It is demonstrated that a proper waiting strategy can significantly increase the probability of being able to service the additional customer, at the same time reducing the average detour to serve that customer.

Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva patienters erfarenhet i väntan på operation. Metod: I studien används en litteraturöversikt av 8 vetenskapliga artiklar med kvalitativ metod och en induktiv ansats. Vid dataanalysen användes Friberg femstegsmodell. Resultat: Litteraturöversikten visar att patienters känslor i väntan på operation främst varit negativa, med upplevelser som oro, ångest och depression. Resultatet visar dessutom att patienter upplevt känslor som längtan och förhoppning inför operation. Slutsats: Översikten visar att den preoperativa perioden är komplex och upplevelsen skiljer sig därmed mellan olika individer. En stor påverkande faktor för upplevelsen var informationen inför operationen. Vid de tillfällen då informationen varit individanpassad minskade negativa känslor inför operation. Detta resulterar således i att sjuksköterskan behöver hantera olika människors upplevelser, och ge individanpassad vård och information.

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Einzeitige, retrospektive klinische Studie über die klinischen und radiologischen Ergebnisse nach stadienadaptierter Therapie der vollständigen SL-Bandruptur Ø 7,5 Jahre postoperativ. Es wurden 33 Patienten nach SL-Bandnaht zuzüglich dorsaler Kapsulodese (bei intraoperativ vorhandenen, nähbaren SL-Bandresten) und 39 Patienten nach SL-Bandrekonstruktion mittels 3-Ligament-Tenodese (bei fehlenden SL-Bandresten) nachuntersucht. Ein Erhalt des physiologischen karpalen Gefüges nach SL-Bandnaht zzgl. Kapsulodese war zum Zeitpunkt der Nachuntersuchung allenfalls in den statischen Röntgenbildern, jedoch nicht in den Belastungsaufnahmen und nur in der Gruppe mit präoperativ dynamischer SL-Instabilität ersichtlich. In allen Gruppen hatte sich bei >50% der Patienten eine (posttraumatische) Handgelenksarthrose entwickelt. Die Handgelenksbeweglichkeit, die Griffkraft, die Schmerzsituation und die Funktionsscores waren leicht eingeschränkt, jedoch zufriedenstellend. Nach SL-Bandnaht zzgl. Kapsulodese resultierte lediglich eine revisionspflichtige Komplikation (3%). Nach 3LT resultierten >30% revisionspflichtige Komplikationen und >20% Rettungsoperationen. Die 3LT ist ein komplexer, hochinvasiver operativer Eingriff mit hohen Komplikationsrisiken. Als Resultat unserer Studie stellen wir die Wertigkeit der 3LT zur kurativen Therapie der SL-Bandläsion gänzlich in Frage. Falls intraoperativ noch vitale und nähbare SL-Bandreste vorliegen, sollte die Naht des SL-Bandes zuzüglich dorsaler Kapsulodese bevorzugt werden. / Retrospective clinical study about the clinical and radiological results Ø 7,5 after 3-Ligament-Tenodesis (3LT) or Repair of the SL-Ligament and dorsal Capsulodesis. SL-Repair patients had less complications requiring further surgery. 3LT patients had a higher rate of complications requiring further surgery (>30%), up to salvage procedure (>20%). Patients not in need of any salvage procedure had a similarly good clinical outcome in all groups. There was a high rate (>50%) of osteoarthrosis at time of follow-up in all groups. 3LT is a complex and highly-invasive surgical procedure with a high risk of complications, especially scaphoid fractures. If the SL-ligament is completely ruptured but repairable ligament remnants are found, a SL-ligament repair and dorsal capsulodesis should be preferred.