In a world with increasing cultural diversity, it is necessary to understand the different environmental mindsets and natural encounters created by local governments. As the population transforms, integration endeavors are susceptible to be influenced by biased perceptions of immigrants thereby affecting people’s relationship with nature in the city. Örebro is a city in Sweden that has a high focus on environmental management. It is for this reason that elite interviews of local public officials and the analysis of environmental documents have been conducted to investigate this phenomenon. Currently, the framings found portray immigrants as uneducated, fearful, vulnerable, and their use of nature is often described as ‘deviant’. Swedes, on the other hand, are framed as educated, confident, and comfortable in their experience of the city and its nature. The interviews and documents show that the city has ambitious environmental goals in which the Municipality attempts to reduce social differences. However, it continues to develop plans based on erroneous perceptions of both Immigrants and Swedes leading to a possible increase in the power gap between these groups. Additionally, it leads the Municipality to work on the basis of an unsubstantial amalgamation of immigrant groups rather than considering the differences within these.

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2015 / One of the fundamental challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa’s urban settlement planning has been the requirement for social cohesion. For this reason, urban transformation interventions involved the construction of mixed-income housing, wherein social cohesion among low- and middle-income households could be enforced. Far from rhetoric and the drift of middle-income households into cities that were previously the preserves for white people, urban South Africa remains deeply segregated. It is against this background that the study assessed the determinants of the manifestation of social cohesion in the Serala View residential area, which consists of diverse races and different socio-economic classes. The study is in a form of a case study, and has adopted the normative together with the historical research design. The study used both primary and secondary data to complement each other. These data is both qualitative and quantitative. A questionnaire was used to collect data from the purposively sampled respondents, and an interview schedule was used to solicit data from the key informants. The International Business Machine-Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM-SPSS) version 22 software was use for analysis, with which a non-parametric t-test was conducted to determine the intensity of the respondents on the different dimensions of social cohesion. Analysis results reveal there are three typologies of mixed-income housing, which are generally recognized in urban areas of many countries, and that the Serala View is a Gated Townhouse Complex typology. Importantly, this typology is mainly identified by six physical characteristics, which are central in determining the manifestations of social cohesion in the gated townhouse complex typology. Importantly, target hardening, which refers to security measures, is considered to be the most important aspect in Serala View residential development. From the analyses and interpretation of the theoretical and empirical evidence, the dissertation concludes that the contributions of mixed-income housing towards social cohesion are mixed and non-straightforward. However, there is theoretical validity of the notion that such an approach could cultivate social cohesion among different socio-economic classes. Results from Serala View Residential area largely confirm this theoretical positioning. This dissertation concedes that implementation discrepancies could be the real elephant in the room, rather than the fault of the idea itself. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

Regional and Cohesion Policy is the EU's most operational and close-citizen development policy, with visible results. However, with interdependent economic, social, and territorial dimensions, impact of Cohesion Policy (CP) in various regions and social groups has become a contested subject recently. Besides, a particular importance has been given to promoting social cohesion in recent years as a result of successful enlargement waves and economic financial crisis that have brought significant socioeconomic imbalances across social groups including marginalised communities and minorities. CP has broadened its scope to include more social issues and human rights in line with EU strategies in recent years, despite the fact that it does not directly reflect a minority policy. As a result, combating with social exclusion and promoting social inclusion with focus on minorities and vulnerable groups has become CP's primary objectives during the last two programming periods. Therefore, this study examines social inclusion objective of CP in a particular minority region, Western Thrace of Greece, where the Turkish minority exist. Focusing on two main criteria of social inclusion, active participation to socioeconomic and public life and access to resources, services and rights, this study aims to reveal to...

The dissertation thesis is focused of the method of testing the building sealnats. This is a summary of the research focused on the evaluation of sealants in interaction with the underlying materials. Attention is focused on the official test methods contained in European technical standards, the benefits of individual methods, their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Also included are the overall findings of the practical application of the test procedures applied to 10 commercially available industrial sealants on 8 different substrates, including facade lining boards used for lightweight envelope systems. The dissertation thesis contains general conclusions about individual test methods. The research also includes various ways of preparing and conditioning test specimens that simulate different environmental conditions and, in some cases, play a crucial role in the final evaluation of sealants.

This master’s thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part are these topics: bonding theory, treatment of bonding surface, types of adhesives, adhesives in the transportation industry and construction and stress of bonded joints. In the second part of this thesis is experimental evaluation of the effect of surface of material on strength of bonded joint.

In April 2019 the European Parliament adopted its position on the so-called Mobility Package, a set of proposals for new rules for the transport sector within the European Union. Ever since the Mobility Package was first laid forward by the European Commission in 2017, it has been a contentious issue both within and outside of the European institutions and has often been framed as a conflict between “old” and “new” member states of the European Union.  This study seeks to investigate whether the voting pattern of the European Parliament on the issue of the Mobility Package was divided between old and new member states, or if the party groups of the European Parliament had a stronger influence. As such, the study can contribute to the research debate surrounding what role nationality and party group affiliation play in influencing the voting patterns of the European Parliament. The results of this study show that nationality seems to have had a stronger influence on the voting pattern than the party groups had. The level of cohesion was higher within member states than within party groups. Overall, the division between old and new member states seems to be a stronger predictor of voting behavior than the party groups as well. Still, within the groups of old and new member states, there are differences in voting patterns between different party groups, which means that party groups also seem to affect voting behavior. While this study cannot in itself explain the specific reasons behind the parliamentarians’ voting choices, hopefully, it can contribute to the aggregated knowledge of the political conflict lines facing European cooperation.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2019 / The Fourth Industrial Revolution has entrenched the use of communication technologies in the workplace owing to their advantages. However, these same technologies can also present challenges for organisations, especially when employees become too dependent on them, for example, using emails as a sole form of communication. Consequently, this impacts staff interaction, their interpersonal communication, as well as staff cohesion negatively. The main objective of this research study was to establish if faculty staff rely excessively on email communication, resulting in reduced interpersonal communication, staff cohesion, and staff interaction. The researcher used an interpretive phenomenological quantitative research approach in a case study at the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences at UoT X with the aim to understand participants’ email experiences. The sample frame comprised 438 staff members, while the study adopted a non-probability sampling method. The findings revealed that a majority of the employees rely on electronic communication to communicate important information to other staff members in spite of the fact that they did not receive any formal training to use email in a professional business environment. Moreover, the research found that over-reliance on email communication impacted negatively on relationships amongst faculty staff, whilst poor interpersonal communication was a major cause of conflict and misunderstandings, as shown in the literature. Faculty staff should be encouraged to interact with their colleagues on a face-to-face basis, and should only resort to using electronic communication in urgent contexts. Staff relations are built and strengthened by sharing experiences, interacting both formally and informally, resolving disagreements, and encouraging interpersonal dialogue, diversity and tolerance through interactions. Furthermore, faculties should create social environments such as off-campus research retreats, university sports events, conferences, recreational tours, and subject clusters to aid sharing experiences, and staff cohesion.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / As an official and second language in Ghana, English is used as a medium of instruction in the Ghanaian educational setting, especially at the university level. Therefore, for Ghanaian students to go through their university education successfully, they should be able to demonstrate competence in the usage of English. However, time and again, there have been series of complaints from most English language teachers about the Ghanaian students’ lack of dexterity in writing cohesive and coherent texts. The present study, therefore, has as its aim to explore texture in first-year Ghanaian undergraduate students' essays (GUSEs). This focus is achieved through four main specific objectives. Thus, the study accounts for (1) the types of cohesive devices (2) the cohesive errors (3) the disciplinary variation in the type of cohesive devices and cohesive errors and (4) the thematic progression patterns in the essays of these first-year Ghanaian undergraduate students. To achieve these objectives, I use the Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective to text analysis, specifically the metafunction of texture as projected by Halliday (1967, 1970, 1985, 1994, and 2004), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin and Rose (2003) and Martin (2015). / 2023

Syftet med studien var att undersöka vilka upplevelser lagmedlemmar inom ett manligt ishockeylag har kring sammanhållning, samt vilka faktorer som upplevs vara betydande för social sammanhållning och uppgiftsorienterad sammanhållning. Syftet med studien var även att få en fördjupad kunskap kring hur lagets upplevda sammanhållning påverkar den idrottsliga prestationen. Studiens teoretiska ramverk baseras på en begreppsmodell över lagsammanhållning i idrottslag, vilket är en modell som förklarar social sammanhållning och uppgiftsorienterad sammanhållning samt de två huvudgrupperna; gruppintegration och individens attraktion till gruppen. För att undersöka studiens syfte så använde sig författarna till denna studie av semistrukturerade intervjuer som metod. Åtta personer deltog i studien och intervjuades utifrån en intervjuguide vilken var inspirerad av mätinstrumentet Group Environment Questionnaire. Studiens deltagare var mellan 20-28 år. Det insamlade materialet analyserades utifrån en tematisk analys. Studiens resultat visar att manliga idrottare upplever sammanhållning som en central del av ett idrottslag och anser att det finns ett samband mellan lagsammanhållning och prestation. Undersökningsdeltagarna uppmärksammade främst social sammanhållning som en framgångsrik faktor kopplat till prestation. Slutsatsen är att sammanhållning som helhet är en central faktor för ett fungerande och framgångsrikt idrottslag. / The purpose of the study was to investigate what experiences team members within a male ice hockey team have about cohesion, as well as what factors are perceived to be important for social cohesion and task-oriented cohesion. The purpose of the study was also to gain an indepth knowledge of how the team's perceived cohesion affects athletic performance. The study's theoretical framework is based on a conceptual model of team cohesion in sports teams, which is a model that explains social and task-oriented team cohesion as well as the two main groups; group integration and the individual's attraction to the group. To investigate the purpose of the study, the authors of this study used semi-structured interviews as a method. Eight people participated in the study and were interviewed through an interview guide which was inspired by the measuring instrument Group Environment Questionnaire. The participants of the study were between 20-28 years old. The collected material was analyzed through a thematic analysis. The results of the study show that male athletes experience cohesion as a central part of a sports team and believe that there is a connection between team cohesion and performance. The participants of the study paid particular attention to social cohesion as a successful factor linked to performance. The conclusion is that cohesion as a whole is a central factor for a functioning and successful sports team.

The pivotal intention of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive and detailed comparison of the contemporary machine translation and the traditional translation performed by a person. The theoretical part contains two segments which are essential towards establishing the background for the thesis. Firstly, a brief historical context is presented to illustrate how and why the concept of machine translation came to exist. Its relevance, utilization and basic technological principles are presented within the confines of the technology currently available. Secondly, an overview of specific language elements which commonly present an obstacle for translators, be it those possessing human or artificial intelligence, is elaborated and briefly commented upon. The practical part contains a selected body of text which is then translated, firstly by using a specific software and secondly by the author of the thesis. These translations are compared with regard to their accuracy, with references made to the mechanics of machine translation and the source code employed to perform the translation itself, effectively combining linguistic point of view with the technological aspect of the algorithm applied in the translation software. The final part contains a conclusion and summary of obtained results and...