Man-made objects are an expression of both the social organisation in which they were produced and the communicative context in which they appear and are used. In this respect, they represent easily accessible material, which is highly suitable for and useful in reconstructing the social structures in organisations and opening up latent structures of meaning for analysis. Nevertheless the analysis of physical materials has tended to live a shadow existence. This paper presents a hermeneutic method of analysing artefacts in organisations. The basic concept centres on the reconstructing of the processes of meaning and organising in social systems. After providing a brief introduction to the methodological principles, the paper goes on to discuss this method in greater detail. Concrete examples of the study of specific materials in an organisational analysis context are used to ground the interpretation of artefacts in the overall organisational analysis context. The paper closes with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of this kind of analysis. (authors' abstract) / Series: ["p_series_typename_S48" not defined]

The aim of this thesis was to investigate how students, teachers and special teachers use, or may want to use, mobile phones as a resource in everyday schoolwork. An analysis of the result was made base on two main theories. One i Säljös theory about the sociocultural perspective, where artefacts play an important part in the devolopment of human society. The other is Laurillardss thougts of social learning and the use of technology in teaching. The methods used were inquiries and semi-structured interwiews with individuals and groups. The result shows that students in compulsory school use the mobile phone as a calculator and för listening to music as a means to concentrate. Senior high school students use the mobile phone as a calculator, to seek information on the internet, and to communicate aboute schoolwork. The older the students, the more they appreciated the use of the mobile phones calendar and its reminder function. Both students, teachers and special teachers could see benefits in using the mobile phone in schoolwork, for example using apps, making recordings and reading e-books. Older students, and some teachers, wanted to use the mobile phone as a means for accessing shared knowledge.

Passive air samplers (PAS) using XAD-resin were deployed at a wide variety of sites around the world for four years to asses the spatial and temporal trends of legacy organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and current use pesticides (CUPs) in the global atmosphere. Legacy OCPs are prevalent in developing countries, whereas certain CUPs dominate in North America and Europe. OCP levels are declining world wide. Concentrations from the XAD-based PAS agreed with those from polyurethane foam (PUF) disk PAS within a factor of 4 for most sites. The comparison revealed that the sampling rate of the PUF-based PAS is more dependent on wind speed, whereas that of the XAD-PAS has a higher dependence on temperature. Analysis of PAS deployed across arid, subtropical Botswana showed that recent use has more impact on present day air concentrations than historical use. Year-long measurements by high volume air sampling in Botswana yielded higher HCB levels in winter, and higher endosulfan levels in summer. Those variations are neither related to temperature fluctuation nor seasonal hydrological events, and are therefore more likely caused by pesticide usage pattern. Very low levels of OCPs were found in the warm, dry, low organic matter soils of Botswana, including in soils from historical use areas. Such soils appear to have a low long-term storage capacity for pesticides allowing for rapid volatilization. They are thus not long-term sources of pesticides to the atmosphere. Endosulfan sulfate levels were observed to increase in tropical soils with increasing elevation. Water samples from high altitude cloud forests in Costa Rica contained very low concentrations of CUPs and it is unlikely that that those levels pose a threat to amphibians in cloud forests. Laboratory experiments and literature analysis showed that the inert gas stripping method for the determination of air-water partitioning equilibria is susceptible to surface sorption artifacts for chemicals with a interface-air partition coefficient log (KIA/m) > -3. Using larger bubbles reduces the surface-to-volume ratio and produces accurate air-water partition coefficients for chemicals with log (KIA/m) < -1.2.

Passive air samplers (PAS) using XAD-resin were deployed at a wide variety of sites around the world for four years to asses the spatial and temporal trends of legacy organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and current use pesticides (CUPs) in the global atmosphere. Legacy OCPs are prevalent in developing countries, whereas certain CUPs dominate in North America and Europe. OCP levels are declining world wide. Concentrations from the XAD-based PAS agreed with those from polyurethane foam (PUF) disk PAS within a factor of 4 for most sites. The comparison revealed that the sampling rate of the PUF-based PAS is more dependent on wind speed, whereas that of the XAD-PAS has a higher dependence on temperature. Analysis of PAS deployed across arid, subtropical Botswana showed that recent use has more impact on present day air concentrations than historical use. Year-long measurements by high volume air sampling in Botswana yielded higher HCB levels in winter, and higher endosulfan levels in summer. Those variations are neither related to temperature fluctuation nor seasonal hydrological events, and are therefore more likely caused by pesticide usage pattern. Very low levels of OCPs were found in the warm, dry, low organic matter soils of Botswana, including in soils from historical use areas. Such soils appear to have a low long-term storage capacity for pesticides allowing for rapid volatilization. They are thus not long-term sources of pesticides to the atmosphere. Endosulfan sulfate levels were observed to increase in tropical soils with increasing elevation. Water samples from high altitude cloud forests in Costa Rica contained very low concentrations of CUPs and it is unlikely that that those levels pose a threat to amphibians in cloud forests. Laboratory experiments and literature analysis showed that the inert gas stripping method for the determination of air-water partitioning equilibria is susceptible to surface sorption artifacts for chemicals with a interface-air partition coefficient log (KIA/m) > -3. Using larger bubbles reduces the surface-to-volume ratio and produces accurate air-water partition coefficients for chemicals with log (KIA/m) < -1.2.

Once the founding site of the city of Toronto and its second largest watercourse, the Garrison Creek and its original landscape of dense forest and deep ravines have disappeared beneath an aggressive process of development and growth. Yet, despite attempts to subdue the creek, it continues to reveal itself through a collection of buildings, sites and structures, here collectively referred to as artefacts, that mark its path. This thesis presents the lost stories of the Garrison Creek as an investigation into the circumstances surrounding its burial and the city’s futile attempts to control its wilderness. Recounted as an historical narrative through the pairing of archival photographs and stories, this thesis exhibits a catalogue of the politics, betrayal, confusion, characters, voices, lessons and synchronicities that have emerged through the burial of the creek. The structure of this thesis is intended to draw out a definition that describes the tenuous, conflicted and complex relationship between a major North American city undergoing rapid change and the wilderness from which it emerged.

Once the founding site of the city of Toronto and its second largest watercourse, the Garrison Creek and its original landscape of dense forest and deep ravines have disappeared beneath an aggressive process of development and growth. Yet, despite attempts to subdue the creek, it continues to reveal itself through a collection of buildings, sites and structures, here collectively referred to as artefacts, that mark its path. This thesis presents the lost stories of the Garrison Creek as an investigation into the circumstances surrounding its burial and the city’s futile attempts to control its wilderness. Recounted as an historical narrative through the pairing of archival photographs and stories, this thesis exhibits a catalogue of the politics, betrayal, confusion, characters, voices, lessons and synchronicities that have emerged through the burial of the creek. The structure of this thesis is intended to draw out a definition that describes the tenuous, conflicted and complex relationship between a major North American city undergoing rapid change and the wilderness from which it emerged.

A software system is represented by different software artefacts ranging from requirements specifications to source code. As the system evolves, artefacts are often modified at different rates and times resulting in inconsistencies, which in turn can hinder effective communication between stakeholders, and the understanding and maintenance of systems. The problem of the differential evolution of heterogeneous software artefacts has not been sufficiently addressed to date as current solutions focus on specific sets of artefacts and aspects of consistency management and are not fully automated. This thesis presents the concept of holistic artefact consistency management and a proof-of-concept framework, ACM, which aim to support the consistent evolution of heterogeneous software artefacts while minimising the impact on user choices and practices and maximising automation. The ACM framework incorporates traceability, change impact analysis, change detection, consistency checking and change propagation mechanisms and is designed to be extensible. The thesis describes the design, implementation and evaluation of the framework, and an approach to automate trace link creation using machine learning techniques. The framework evaluation uses six open source systems and suggests that managing the consistency of heterogeneous artefacts may be feasible in practical scenarios.

The diploma thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part is consisted of outlining the meaning of The Crusade both from the visual art understanding point of view, as well as spiritual thinking. At the beginning of the thesis there is just briefly described the history and the position of religious in society, view of folksy religiousness and the problematic of The Crusade, it is also pointed to Passion cycle, modern concept of The Crusade and its own Crusade in the conception of Mikuláš Medek and Karel Stádník. The practical part deals with the creation of its own proposal chosen to stop The Crusade, which are subsequently placed in the area of selected locality around Prachatice.

An interpretive research approach will be used to describe and decompose UML diagrams into their respective building blocks. A top down approach will be used to determine views that are important to enterprises during the system development lifecycle. The importance of providing graphical representations to describe conceptual ideas will be stressed. A short history will be provided of the origins of UML as well as a description of the diagrams used. Since UML is a language and not a methodology a brief discussion regarding a methodology, the Rational Unified Process, will be covered. The Zachman framework will be used to present a two-dimensional (Columns and Rows) view of an enterprise together with a summary of what could be represented in the framework. The UML building blocks will be mapped within the Zachman framework together with possible reasons for the mapping. The paper will conclude by combining several views by different authors to represent artefacts within the Zachman framework and to show the strengths and weaknesses of the current UML version 1.5 and what organisations should be aware of when considering implementing UML. / Dissertation (M.IT)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Informatics / unrestricted

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy has shown potential to quickly and non-destructively measure the chemical signatures of biomedical samples such as single biological cells, and tissue from biopsy. The size of a single cell (diameter ~10-50 µm) are of a similar magnitude to the mid-IR wavelengths of light (~1-10 µm) giving rise to Mie-type scattering. The result of this scattering is that chemical information is significantly distorted in the IR spectrum.Distortions in biomedical IR spectra are often observed as a broad oscillating baseline on which the absorbance spectrum is superimposed. A spectral feature commonly observed is the sharp decrease in intensity at approximately 1700 cm-1, next to the Amide I band (~1655 cm-1), which pre-2009 was called the 'dispersion artefact'. The first contributing factor towards the 'dispersion artefact' investigated was the reflection signal arising from the air to sample interface entering the collection optics during transflection experiments. This was theoretically modelled, and then experimentally verified. It was shown that IR mapping could be done using reflection mode, yielding information from the optically dense nucleus which previously caused extinction of light in transmission mode.The most important contribution to the spectral distortions was due to resonant Mie scattering (RMieS) which occurs when the scattering particle is strongly absorbing such as biomedical samples. RMieS was shown to explain both the baselines in IR spectra, and the 'dispersion artefact' and was validated using a model system of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) of varying sizes from 5 to 15 µm. Theoretical simulations and experimental data had an excellent match thus proving the theory proposed. With an understanding of the physics/mathematics of the spectral distortions, a correction algorithm was written, the RMieS extended multiplicative signal correction (RMieS-EMSC). This algorithm modelled the measured spectrum as superposition of a first guess (the reference spectrum) which was of a similar biochemical composition to the pure absorbance spectrum of the sample, and a scattering curve. The scattering curve was estimated as the linear combination of a database of a large number of scattering curves covering a range of feasible physical parameters. Simulated and measured data verified that the RMieS-EMSC increased IR spectral quality.