Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts / Thesis (MA (VA)) -- Stellenbosch University, 2006. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cultural evolution & genre: an investigation of three South African graphic narratives of the South African Border war (1975-1988) Magister in Fine Arts thesis, Department of Fine Arts, Stellenbosch University This study analyses three South African graphic narratives in the context of culture evolving in the Darwinian sense. It is deemed necessary to consider evolutionary theory in such a study of graphic narratives as it considers the development of culture as resulting from a process of evolution akin to natural selection. Special attention is paid to the theory of memetics, in the field of evolutionary epistemology, and its proposal to model cultural evolution. While this model relies on evolutionary theory, the development of culture is seen as evolving separately from biological evolution. This evolutionary perspective on culture is combined with the concepts of discourse and genre in social semiotics and media studies to investigate the changes in the depiction of the Border war in South African graphic narratives. As such this study focuses on the strategic viewpoint of cultural evolution, the role of memes in genre and its interaction with the evolution of discourse. This approach is offered as a useful method to analyse cultural artefacts. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Kulturele evolusie & genre: 'n ondersoek van drie grafiese verhale van die Suid-Afrikaanse Grensoorlog (1975-1988) Magister in Beeldende Kunste tesis, Oepat1ement Beeldende Kunste, Universiteit van Stellcnbosch Hicrdie studic ontleed drie Suid-Afrikaanse graficse verhale in die konteks van kultuur wat evolueer in die Oarwinistiese sin. Oit word belangrik gereken om evolusieteorie in so 'n studie van grafiese verhale in ag te neem aangesien die ontwikkeling van kultuur as die resultaat van 'n proses van evolusie, verwand aan natuurlike seleksie, geag word. Spesiale aandag word geskenk aan die teorie van meme, in die veld van evolusieepistemologie, en die teorie se voorstel om kulturele evolusie te modelleer. Terwyl so 'n teorie op evolusieteorie steun, word die ontwikkeling van kultuur beskou as 'n afsonderlike proses van natuurlike seleksie. Hierdie evolusienere perspektief op kultuur word verenig met die konsepte van diskoers en genre in sosiale semiotiek en media studies om die veranderende uitbeelding van die Grensoorlog in Suid-Afrikaanse gratiese verhale na te vors. Sodanig fokus hierdie studie op die strategiesc oogpunt van kulturele evolusie, die rol van meme in genre en die interaksie met die ontwikkeling van diskoers. Hierdie benadering word aangebied as 'n waardevolle metode om kulturele artefakte te ontleed.

In January, 2009, I joined Bikes Across Borders, a local grassroots organization, on their yearly bike caravan to Mexico. The group works to promote bicycles, both here and in Mexico, as an environmentally and financially sound alternative to motorized transportation. Each winter, members ride bicycles they build out of salvaged parts to border cities in Mexico. They give these bicycles to maquiladora workers who would otherwise spend a large portion of their income on transportation. These workers make a fraction of what they would in the U.S. and live in shacks amid the pollution from the factories they work in. This is the story of one group’s attempt at making a difference in the lives of these workers. / text

This dissertation presents measures of efficiency and locality for Internet addressing schemes. Historically speaking, many issues, faced by the Internet, have been solved just in time, to make the Internet just work~\cite{justWork}. Consensus, however, has been reached that today's Internet routing and addressing system is facing serious scaling problems: multi-homing which causes finer granularity of routing policies and finer control to realize various traffic engineering requirements, an increased demand for provider-independent prefix allocations which injects unaggregatable prefixes into the Default Free Zone (DFZ) routing table, and ever-increasing Internet user population and mobile edge devices. As a result, the DFZ routing table is again growing at an exponential rate. Hierarchical, topology-based addressing has long been considered crucial to routing and forwarding scalability. Recently, however, a number of research efforts are considering alternatives to this traditional approach. With the goal of informing such research, we investigated the efficiency of address assignment in the existing (IPv4) Internet. In particular, we ask the question: ``how can we measure the locality of an address scheme given an input AS-level graph?'' To do so, we first define a notion of efficiency or locality based on the average number of bit-hops required to advertize all prefixes in the Internet. In order to quantify how far from ``optimal" the current Internet is, we assign prefixes to ASes ``from scratch" in a manner that preserves observed semantics, using three increasingly strict definitions of equivalence. Next we propose another metric that in some sense quantifies the ``efficiency" of the labeling and is independent of forwarding/routing mechanisms. We validate the effectiveness of the metric by applying it to a series of address schemes with increasing randomness given an input AS-level graph. After that we apply the metric to the current Internet address scheme across years and compare the results with those of compact routing schemes.

The United States and Mexico share responsibility in preserving the quality of their international river system, the Rio Grande / Río Bravo, and several international treaties govern the quantity of water each country must give and take. Because no treaty establishes joint standards for the quality of the river, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) was created in 1993 as a declaration of principles and objectives concerning the conservation and the protection of the environment as well as a guide of concrete measures to further cooperate on these matters. One particular goal of the NAAEC was to improve water quality in the US-Mexico Border Region, ensuring a clean, safe, and reliable water supply for the area. Although the US and Mexican federal governments have made substantial technical and financial commitments through binational agencies like the North American Development Bank (NADB) and the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), few empirical studies have assessed the impact of binational expenditures on wastewater infrastructure in this region. This report uses longitudinal panel data regression models to estimate the impact of capital expenditures on water quality made by binational, federal, and state water quality management institutions from 1995 to 2012. This analysis considers expenditures made on both sides of the Rio Grande watershed that constitutes the international border, beginning with El Paso, Texas and ending in the Gulf of Mexico. / text

Controlled environment agriculture offers a solution to challenges including less available land, water deficits, and consumer demand for pesticide free produce. However, control of soil-borne diseases is a major limiting factor. The goal of this dissertation was to examine predictions of the hypothesis that border cells function to protect plant health by controlling microorganisms associated with plants grown in hydroponic culture. Border cells separate from root tips upon immersion in water, and appear to have important roles in the defense mechanisms of plant roots. The general objectives were (1) to study the delivery of border cells in hydroponics; (2) to evaluate interactions between border cells and microorganisms in hydroponics; and (3) to explore approaches to alter border cell production for improved root disease control. In this study it was confirmed that border cells can be released continuously into the solution of hydroponic culture suggesting that plants grown in this system may use extra energy in the production of new border cells. Free border cells interacted with microorganisms present in the hydroponic solution by secreting an extracellular capsule. Previous studies showed that proteins are a key component of this capsule, including lectins. The interaction of pea lectin and Nectria haematococca spores therefore was explored. Results demonstrated that pea lectin agglutinates fungal spores in a hapten-specific manner, and inhibits their germination. Lectin had no negative effect on root development suggesting that it could be used as a potential control for soil-borne diseases in hydroponics. To control the production of border cells, subsequent studies measured the impact of a transient exposure of root tips to different metabolites secreted by root caps and border cells. Exposure to specific metabolites altered the production of border cells without measurable effects on root growth and development. This is in contrast to results obtained with altered gene expression. For example, gene silencing of a border cell specific gene resulted in altered root growth.

The Tohono O'odham Nation of southern Arizona and northern Sonora Mexico has two distinct and distinctive cultural, social, political and federal histories. The American government politically acknowledges one group while the other is entrenched in Mexican social policy that regards Indigenous peoples as equals to the Mestizo population known as campesinos or peasants. The Sonoran Tohono O'odham community of Al Pi'ichkin or Pitiquito, Sonora, Mexico, has managed to persist and survive into the twenty first century despite the presence of an international boundary and the assimilative efforts of Mexican socio-federal Indian policy.This is an exploration of the issue of cultural continuity within the community of Pitiquito, Sonora Mexico via the following eight themes which emerged from my field work: the oral tradition; kinship; tradition and modernity in 2007; the Feast of St. Francis at Magdalena de Kino; nationalism; importance of photography; identity; and cultural persistence. The final ceramic mural along with the accompanying essay will constitute my Ph.D. dissertation project.

Cross-border programs are often cited as having transformative effects on educators, claiming increased cultural awareness, intercultural understanding and culturally responsive practices. However, these shifts are most commonly evaluated in the days and weeks after teachers return to the U.S. and rarely allow for a long-term, in-depth understanding of the impacts. This dissertation outlines findings from a collaborative action research study that attempted to document the experiences of a small group of K-12 teachers before, during and after their participation in a cross-border experience in Mexico. My overarching questions examined the U.S. school contexts to which four White teachers returned as the under-theorized "next step" to their cross-border experience, specifically seeking to make sense of how new understandings of Mexico influenced their perceptions of, and engagement with Mexican immigrant families. Ongoing inquiry groups were implemented as part of this study; over the course of eighteen months, teachers used this space to critically reflect on their experiences abroad and to plan how they would incorporate new knowledge and understandings into their teaching contexts. Through this process, teachers conceptualized, planned and engaged in three dialogues with Mexican immigrant parents in which they purposefully created a new, "third space" for cross-border narratives, or the mutual sharing of life stories, as they related to their own educational experiences in Mexico and/or the U.S. Utilizing an ethnographic approach, data was collected via field notes and digital recordings of interviews, inquiry group meetings and parent-teacher dialogues. Narrative methods were also used as a principal tool for inquiry and analysis. My findings suggest that the transformative effects of cross-border programs are not solely a result of time spent abroad, but an ongoing process of inquiry, reflection and action once teachers return to the U.S. It was through the transaction of the cross-border experiences, inquiry group meetings, and the powerful narratives that emerged during the parent-teacher dialogues that teachers were able to acknowledge, revisit and rewrite scripts of deficit pertaining to Mexican families at their school site.

On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of China's economic transition, this thesis deals with several facets of the integration of Chinese domestic market over such an exciting era. Chapter 1 discusses first a variety of institutional reforms aimed at reinforcing the central control over regional affairs and improving the integration of domestic market. Several stylised facts about the local protectionism, which come from a recent survey implemented by a respected institution, are also illustrated in the chapter. Chapter 2 offers a brief review of the literature relative to China's internal integration. Generally speaking, the studies have proceeded along six major lines: similarity of production structure, price convergence, synchronization of business cycles, domestic trade linkages, interregional capital mobility and population migration. Chapter 3 examines the trade pattern within China. In the spirit of McCallum (1995), we find that after controlling for various traditional gravity factors, the trade flows within a Chinese province are 23 to 28 times as dense as those between provinces over the period of 1992-2003. Such findings suggest a highly fragmented product market within China. A trend toward market integration is, however, derived from the evolution analysis. The regressions by sub-period samples show that since the mid-1990s, the magnitudes of border effects have exhibited a dramatic decline. Chapter 4 investigates the capital mobility and capital allocation efficiency among Chinese provinces. We show first that the provincial savings and investment rates are significantly and positively correlated over the period of 1978-2006. According to the Feldstein-Horioka's argument (1980), this relationship can be interpreted as evidence of low capital mobility. Furthermore, by testing the causality between provincial aggregate investment and income, we fail to provide consistent evidence to support the hypothesis of efficient capital allocation in China. Chapter 5 addresses the labor force migration among Chinese regions. After a short introduction of reforms of hukou system, we derive a simple wage gap equation including education level, market potential and provincial border indicator as explaining variables. In using city and sector-level data, we find that other things being equal, the wage dispersions within provincial borders are significantly less pronounced than those among provinces over the period of 2003-2005. According to the law of one price, such findings imply a weak mobility of labor force among provinces.

The purpose of this thesis has been to examine how cultural differences influence post-acquisition organizational change when there is an acquisition between two countries, in this case, the United Kingdom and Sweden. The study followed a qualitative research method. This is to get a deep insight into the company's actions of how they assimilate and adapt to the new country and culture. The theoretical basis implies mainly acquisitions, culture, integration and organizational change. Furthermore, in the empirical part introduces one case company from the United Kingdom whose acquiring a Swedish company; how they have adapted to each other, how the cultural differences have influenced each other and how integration has proceeded.   The analysis combines our theoretical framework with the collection of empirical data, which they put against each other in a discussion of how well the theory is consistent with empirical data. It also analyzes the context and differences between theory, empirical evidence and case companies' experiences from how the acquisition was formed. This is in order to find patterns showing how employees from lower to higher ranks within the company perceive the acquisition from a Swedish to a British company.   The analysis leads to the conclusion that when the British company takes over a Swedish organization, extreme amount of changes need to be done. The British company culture is reflected by the national culture where financial profits are more important than the personal relationships that Swedes highly value. It is possible to deal with cultural differences if one is aware of their existence, even between countries where the cultural distance is extremely significant.

This thesis consists of four essays or chapters that investigate acquisitions made by UK firms. The main focus of the research is the acquirers’ abnormal returns that are associated with the announcement of domestic and cross-border acquisitions. The research provides empirical evidence on some of the significant issues that have been raised in the literature, particularly focusing on measuring operating performance for domestic and cross-border acquisitions over the long-term. The first essay investigates acquirers’ announcement abnormal returns for acquisitions that have been conducted by UK firms, either domestically or internationally. The principal finding is that acquisitions of domestic firms appear to generate larger returns, whereas acquisitions classified as cross-border do not appear to add value to the acquiring firm. The second essay examines the characteristics of the deal, and how these impact the acquirers’ returns for both domestic and cross-border acquisitions. The characteristics considered are the method of payment, the industrial relationship between the acquirer and the target, the relative size of the acquirer to the target, the type of the target firm and the Book-to-Market ratio of the acquiring firm. The third essay investigates the directors’ overconfidence and its impact on the acquirers’ returns. Directors’ overconfidence is examined depending on the self-attribution bias by distinguishing between the abnormal returns to frequent and infrequent acquirers. The fourth essay examines insider trading via studying the relationship between the private investment decisions of the directors and the firm’s investment in respect of acquisitions it makes over the announcement date of the acquisition. Two different methods are proposed to classify directors into optimistic and neutral based on these personal portfolio trades. The fifth empirical chapter focuses on domestic and cross-border acquisitions with public targets, and studies their synergy gains and operating performance for a 3-year period after the announcement year. The aim is to try to understand what these firms gain from such acquisitions, given the apparent absence of a gain in value at the announcement of the investment. It is essential to add that the importance of this thesis comes from shedding a light on the role of acquisition activity in UK market within last 10 years domestically and internationally. Furthermore, providing a significant advice to firms not to allocate their capital in acquisitions with public targets because there is not benefit from investing in these types of investment.