Three cave sites, Nelson Bay Cave on the coast, Kangkara in an intermontane valley and Boomplaas some 80 km inland in the southern Cape Province, South Africa, were excavated between 1970 and 1979. Nearly 225 000 stone artefacts from the Later Stone Age sequence dating within the last 20 000 years are described from these three sites and are related to micro- and macroevolutionary changes at a regional and sub-continental level to provide a model for change in the Later Stone Age. The classification scheme was designed to highlight inter- and intra-site variability through time and focused on analysis of the successive stages in the reduction sequence from raw material nodule to finished tool. Linear regression was used to test for interdependence and independence of variables and the significance of changes in size and shape of untrimmed flakes and scrapers was assessed. In the case of the scrapers, samples from the three southern Cape sites and from the eastern and northern Cape were compared and tested for significance with Mann Whitney and Kolmogorov-Smirnov two-sample non-parametric tests. The results indicate two levels of change through time, that involving the appearance of innovations that can be described as macroevolutionary, and that involving the subsequent modification of the frequency, size and shape of these innovations and other artefacts already part of the toolkit that can be described as microevolutionary change. By comparison with modern technological data, innovative changes represent the diffusion and acceptance of major advances in tool technology that are predictable from trends observed in modern technology. Post-innovative or microevolutionary changes, on the other hand, take the form of oscillations around a gradually changing mean that are similar to changes in style or fashion in the modern idiom. The hypothesis that technological change was stimulated by environmental change was tested by comparing the timing of technological changes with those seen in oxygen isotope ratios in a Cango Cave stalagmite, charcoals from woody plants brought into Boomplaas Cave for firewood, small mammals caught by owls and eaten at Boomplaas and Nelson Bay Cave, and larger mammals hunted by people at all three sites. The results indicate that there is no consistent relationship between changes in the stone tool technology and environmental change. There is, however, a coincidence in the timing of changes in the larger mammals hunted and the stone tool technology that took place over a relatively short span of time between 12 000 and 11 000 B.P., post-dating major environmental adjustments at the end of the last glacial cycle by some 3000 years. Technological changes that took place between 8000 and 6000 B.P. were not coincident with a change in the animals hunted, nor with an equally sudden shift in environmental data, while a change in economy from hunting to herding within the last 2000 years was not accompanied by a change in the stone tool technology although pottery was added to the toolkit. There is thus a very complex relationship between economy, technology and environmental change that is not readily predictable. The sequence in the southern Cape can be described in terms of punctuated equilibria, but the times of rapid change in technology, economy and climate do not always coincide. In the technological system periods of relative stasis have been labelled the Robberg, Albany and Wilton industries. The content, dating and evidence for subsistence during the Later Stone Age south of the Zambesi is reviewed from several hundred dated horizons at over 160 sites and although there is some spatial variability, the sequence of technological changes is much the same throughout the sub-continent. This confirms the long-held belief that the innovations that spread through the sub-continent were diffused over a very wide area of the Old World as the result of a well developed network of intercommunications during the Stone Age, while at times population migrations also took place. Microevolutionary changes, on the other hand, tend to be more regionally specific and may have been stimulated by different cues.

Bibliography: pages 144-155. / Dunes are an integral part of the Walvis Bay environment. Their dynamics significantly influence the functioning of the coastal system and have major implications for both the ecological and socio-economic environments. In light of residential, commercial and industrial requirements for the Walvis Bay area, dune encroachment needs to be seriously considered in the future planning of land-use and resource utilisation. The overall objective of this report, therefore, is to provide a better understanding of the dominant role dunes and sand drift play in the study area and in so doing promote the more judicious future planning and management of the region. In order to achieve this aim, several specific objectives were addressed, these being: to identify and clarify all dune types occurring in the study area, and discuss the geomorphological and ecological characteristics of each; to provide an analysis of the long-term stability of dunes in the Walvis Bay area by means of aerial photograph interpretation; to highlight all factors that contribute to dune encroachment and to assess the ramifications of this movement upon the ecological and socio-economic environments; * to emphasise elements that need to be considered with any future planning of land-use and development; * to review dune management practices in the Walvis Bay area and provide recommendations for the more effective management of the system in the future.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The thesis is titled a Sociolinguistic and Multisemiotic Analysis of Mobility and Identities in Hangberg, Hout Bay. The guiding idea of this research project is to explore the contesting social and semiotic processes of transformation in Hangberg since the transition towards post-apartheid in South Africa. One of the objectives of this study is to probe how Hangberg and its people are (re)constructed in the media and virtual spaces (Facebook, and newspaper articles) as well as in the physical linguistic/semiotic landscapes (LL) of Hangberg. The researcher uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) and conceptual tools such as resemiotisation and remediation to capture and understand the socio-ideological construction of the people of Hangberg through a mesh of verbal as well as visual language / signs in the virtual and physical semiotic landscapes. / 2023

The Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (GBNERR) adjoins two costal embayments in the eastern Mississippi Sound, Grand Bay and Point Aux Chenes Bay, which encompass a late Pleistocene/ Holocene delta of the Pascagoula-Escatawpa fluvial system. Historical maps and aerial imagery indicate that the GBNERR shoreline has experienced long-term retreat at spatially variable rates. The research presented here investigates the relationship between the coastal geomorphological evolution of GBNERR and the underlying geological framework. Coastal morphology and stratigraphy were characterized by analyzing 85 km of chirp sonar sub-bottom seismic profiles and 45 sediment cores. Shoreline retreat rates were determined through geospatial regression analysis of 11 historical shorelines surveyed between 1850 and 2015. Results indicate that Pleistocene paleochannels in the underlying fluvial distributary ravinement surfaces are spatially correlated with shoreline segments that exhibit elevated retreat rates and should be accounted for in future models of local as well as regional coastal evolution.

A numerical model was developed for the Mobile Bay system to investigate the impacts associated with certain system alterations. The Adaptive Hydraulics (AdH) Code was used to validate the numerical model for hydrodynamics and transport. Due to the physics based nature of the AdH numerical model, the validated model could be altered to represent the plan conditions (removal of the Mobile Bay Causeway). Comparisons of the base and plan model results indicate the impacts of removing the causeway are not widespread and are primarily limited to Chocolatta Bay and the areas adjacent to the causeway. The model results suggest an increased exchange of water between Chocolatta Bay (north of the causeway) and Mobile Bay for the removed causeway configuration. Chocolatta Bay also experiences an increased inflow from the river systems which result in increased suspended sediment concentrations and sediment deposition.

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Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2010. / Statement of responsibility on t.p. reads: Yann Krysinski and Sebastain Luck and Toshi Shepard-Ohta and Gregory Woods. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 122). / The Massachusetts Bay Transit Agency (MBTA) has the stated service objectives of customer service excellence, accessibility, reliability, and state-of-the-art technology. Over the last few years, the MBTA has been concerned about a possible decline in bus service quality. In response, the MBTA launched the Key Bus Route Initiative (KBRI) program in 2009. Funded entirely by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the program is intended to improve bus service reliability on six key bus routes in the Boston area. The program uses an array of new initiatives to achieve this goal. In September 2009, our team of four students in the Master of Engineering Program was asked to provide an independent impact analysis of the KBRI program. In response, we worked to analyze KBRI as well as expand the scope of the study to answer the two-part question of how to best improve bus service performance with limited resources and how to best use existing technology to strategically plan for future performance improvements. To this end, performance metrics were developed, which focus on customer's perception of both bus service efficiency and reliability. These metrics and the methodology provide a short term tool to analyze KBRI, but also a strategic framework for continuous improvement in overall MBTA bus service. This report demonstrates that additional resources deployed on KBRI selected routes had considerable positive impacts on bus service performance. As a result of the KBRI initiatives, MBTA customers riding these routes saved a total wait time of 56 hours per day in the AM and PM peak travel periods. In addition to demonstrating how these results were achieved, this report provides further in-depth analysis of MBTA bus service performance. Several cases are shown where performance was improved without adding additional resources. For that reason, we provide general schedule related findings, which are summarized as recommendations for future efficient schedule adjustments on other MBTA routes. Additionally, our analysis has shown that tremendous potential exists for expanded use of automated data collection systems at the MBTA. By linking several systems, which to this point have not interfaced with one another, we provide to the MBTA a framework for how to use these existing technologies to strategically plan for future performance improvements. / by Yann Krysinski ... [et al.] / M.Eng.