The last decade has witnessed an exponential interest in land investments across numerous industries in the developed countries. Africa has been particularly targeted for investments, increasingly for biofuel production. Though land investments can boost local economies when realized in an equitable manner, many reports also point to large-scale displacements and loss of land for local landowners. There remain empirical unclarities on the subject, and theoretical and analytical frameworks are underdeveloped in explaining the conditions and factors that determine outcomes.   This thesis is exploring the effects of land investments on land tenure security through the lens of credible commitment and neo-patrimonial theory, with a focus on biofuel production in Tanzania as the chosen qualitative case study. The analysis is based on two specific jatropha investments in Tanzania: Sun Biofuels and Diligent Ltd.   The research contribution of the thesis is in merging two theoretical approaches, CCT and Neo-patrimonialism, and applying it to a new research area of land investments in order to establish an understanding of their effects on local land tenure security.

The ongoing conflict between Thailand’s red shirt and yellow shirt parties is not purely political. This tension is rooted in a renewed awareness of regional economic and social inequality, a byproduct of rapid economic growth in the past. This thesis seeks to understand the overall consequences of unequal economic development in Thailand, as the rationale for asserting that a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program is an appropriate policy tool for the ongoing reconciliation efforts.

Kaohsiung is transforming from a city of heavy industries into one of service industries, the rate of unemployment and adjustment of industry structure are becoming the real challenges for local development. During WTO and the 2009 World Games, moreover, Kaohsiung is expected to rise to the challenge of risks. Meanwhile, demand of citizens in Kaohsiung are not fully corresponded to public policies made by central government, and most of the people don¡¦t care as much as should local affairs because of lack of effective communications between public and private sectors. Therefore, in city marketing efforts, it would be more important to encourage participation and integrate multiple sectors¡¦ opinions as ¡§internal marketing¡¨ rather than just trying to attract businesses to the city. An integrated public affair management(PAM) framework(Wang et al., 2003)is adopted to describe situations in the pluralistic societies. Then we introduce the Cognitive Continuum Theory(CCT) adopted by Hammond et al., (1987) and Interactive Management (IM) technique developed by Warfield (1994). Results of studies are: 1) the problems of Kaohsiung¡¦s local development on structure of industry, human resource and port of Kaohsiung, 2) in the CCT studies there exist quite a few differences of cognition and modes of cognition presented tend to ¡§intuition¡¨ or ¡§analysis¡¨ between limited information, and 3) the IM analysis include competitive strategies for Kaohsiung¡¦s local development and an problematique diagram to demonstrate the structure of strategies. The conclusion is that, although there exist diversities of opinions among multiple stakeholders in Kaohsiung, they can be quite effectively addressed with the IM technique. Methods and results introduced and used here should be of value to relevant agencies about public forum and citizen conference.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) is a social assistance program which aims for investing in human capital by enabling families under risk of poverty to send their children to school and to benefit from health services regularly. CCT aims for decreasing poverty by means of cash transfers in the short run and aims for investing in children&rsquo / s human capital by providing basic preventative health care, regular school attendance and nutrition in the long run. Under the state of these aims, beginning from 1990s, more than 20 countries in the world started their own CCT program by the mediation or leadership of World Bank. CCT program in Turkey started so as to decrease the adverse effects of economic crisis in 2001 within the Social Risk Mitigation Project which was financially supported by the World Bank loan and constituted under the Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundation. CCT program in Turkey has been adopted by poor families in recent years, and demands and overall payments within the program have been increased significantly in a consideration of years. The need for examining and predicting the increase in these demands scientifically / and considering the fact that CCT is being applied over 20 countries, and such a study being never done before made this study necessary. In this thesis study, the change of CCT applications and number of beneficiary household over time were modeled using multivariate time series models according to geographical regions. Using the vector autoregressive models with exogenous variables (VARX), the forecasts were obtained for the number of CCT applications and beneficiary households in the future.

For large multihop networks, the time synchronization (TS) error accumulates as the hop number increases with conventional methods, such as Timing-sync Protocol for Sensor Networks (TPSN), Reference Broadcast Synchronization (RBS), and Flooding Time Synchronization Protocol (FTSP). In this paper, to reduce the number of hops to cover the large network and exploit the spatial averaging of TS error between clusters, a novel method combining Concurrent Cooperative Transmission (CCT) and Semi-Cooperative Spectrum Fusion (SCSF) is proposed. This novel method named Cooperative Analog and Digital (CANDI) Time Synchronization protocol consists of two phases: The digital stage and the analog stage. The digital stage uses CCT to broadcast TS packet containing the time information. Cooperating nodes transmit the digitally encoded message in orthogonal channels simultaneously, so the receiver combines the multiple packet to acheive significant SNR advantage. In the analog stage, the cooperating nodes simultaneously transmit their slightly different individual estimates of the propagation time by using frequency shift modulation. Nodes receiving this signal combat fading and reduce estimation error in one step through the averaging inherent in diversity combining. Simulation results for two-dimension (2-D) networks are given to evaluate the performance of CANDI, and CANDI is compared with TPSN.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-10-18T15:37:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 SIUMARA RODRIGUES ALCÂNTARA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGEA 2008..pdf: 9760309 bytes, checksum: 3c00d833a82841dcdf4d92435feff3e2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-18T15:37:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SIUMARA RODRIGUES ALCÂNTARA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGEA 2008..pdf: 9760309 bytes, checksum: 3c00d833a82841dcdf4d92435feff3e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-01 / Capes / Dentre as diversas influências observadas no processo de fermentação semisólida, a atividade de água é um dos fatores mais importantes, pois está diretamente relacionada com a quantidade de água disponível ao microrganismo responsável pela síntese do produto. Assim, objetivou-se a produção de pectinases, usando o pedúnculo de caju seco como meio e o Aspergillus niger CCT 0916 como microrganismo, em um processo fermentativo semi-sólido, verificando a influência da quantidade de água e uma fonte de nitrogénio. Com isso, fez-se a caracterização físico-química do resíduo, o levantamento e ajuste das isotermas de adsorção, o cálculo do calor isostérico total e, verificou-se a influência da umidade inicial e a concentração de sulfato de amónio no meio através da execução de um planejamento fatorial 2 . Observou-se que a caracterização do pedúnculo indicou a necessidade do ajuste da concentração de açúcares redutores e da pectina. O modelo de GAB foi o que melhor ajustou as isotermas de adsorção. A atividade poligalacturonásica máxima foi obtida com atividade de água entre 0,99 e 1,00 e a atividade pectinolítica foi obtida com atividade de água igual a 0,99. Ocorreu inibição pela presença do sulfato de amónio no meio fermentativo com concentrações a partir de 1,5%, tendo apresentado efeito negativo sobre as atividades enzimáticas observadas. Diferentemente da umidade inicial que apresentou efeito positivo sobre as mesmas. Os maiores valores de atividade enzimática foram 11 U/g. Constatou-se também que o bagaço seco do pedúnculo do caju é um substrato competitivo perante outros descritos na literatura. / The water acíivity is one of the most important factor in this process, because it is related with the quantity of available water for the microorganism responsible for the synthesis of the product because the larges quantities of the agro industrial residues. In this context, this work has the objective the production of pectinases, using the cashew peduncle like substratum and the Aspergillus niger CCT 0916 like microorganism, in a solid-state fermentation process, checking the influence of water quantity and nitrogen source. It had done the physiochemical characterization of the residue, the construction and adjusts of the adsorption isotherms, the calculation of the isosteric heat and had checked the influence of the initial moisture and the ammonium sulphate concentration in the médium by factorial design. It observed that the peduncle characterization showed the necessity of adjust of reducing sugar and pectin. The best equation to fit the adsorption isotherms were GAB model. The maximum poligalacturonase activity was obtained with water activity between 0.99 and 1.00. The maximum pectinolytic activity was obtained with 0.99 of water activity. It was observed that occurred inhibition in the médium by presence of ammonium sulphate with concentration equal and over 1.5%. This variable showed negative effect on enzymatic activity. In the other hand, the inicial moisture showed positive effect on the same response. The most values of enzymatic activity were 11 U/g. It had evidenced that the dry bagasse of the cashew peduncle is a competitive substratum.

O crescente consumo de energia produzida a partir do petróleo e do gás natural conduz a melhoria das propriedades mecânicas dos aços microligados empregados na construção dos oleodutos e gasodutos para incrementar o transporte dos recursos a menores custos e elevar a confiabilidade. O aumento do controle das diferentes fases, agregados eutetóides, microconstituintes e precipitados neste tipo de aço, garante a melhoria na resistência mecânica, tenacidade e soldabilidade. Dentro deste contexto foi realizado um trabalho de caracterização microestrutural do aço um microligado para tubos API 5L X80 em amostras de aço como recebido e em diferentes condições de resfriamento. Para o estudo da cinética das transformações de fase, o aço microligado foi submetido a ensaios de dilatometria onde foram identificadas as temperaturas e tempos de início e fim de transformação de fases, para varias velocidades de resfriamento. A partir das diferentes temperaturas e tempos obtidos, em função das taxas de resfriamento, foi possível extrair a curva de Transformação por Resfriamento Continuo (TRC). Os dados da curva TRC foram comparados com as microestruturas de cada corpo de prova por meio de microscopia óptica (MO), microscopia eletrônica de varredura (MEV), microscopia eletrônica de varredura com Field Emission Gun (FEG) e microdureza, caracterizando a evolução morfológica da matriz ferrítica, agregados eutetóides e microconstituinte austenita/martensita (MA). Para a caracterização microestrutural das amostras também foram utilizadas técnicas de análise microestrutural como, nanodureza, análise por difração de raios X em amostras obtidas por extração de precipitados, saturação magnética e microscopia de força atômica (AFM). A técnica de saturação magnética foi desenvolvida por médio de curvas de histerese medidas em um histeresígrafo com peças polares e anel de Rowland para diversas amplitudes de intensidade de campo magnético. Esta técnica permitiu a detecção da saturação magnética do aço sem tratamento térmico e a saturação máxima nos aços com tratamento térmico, o que indicou a total transformação da austenita retida. A relação das duas saturações permitiu determinar a fração de austenita retida no MA. Para as medidas de nanodureza foi utilizado um nanodurômetro acoplado ao microscópio de força atômica (AFM). As nanodurezas obtidas em diferentes grãos foram comparadas com os valores constantes na literatura para identificar as fases, agregados eutetóides e possíveis precipitados da microestrutura. / The continuous increase of energy generated from petroleum and natural gas created the need to improve the mechanical properties of microalloyed steels used in gas and oil pipelines, in order to increase their flow with smaller costs and higher reliability. The control of the different phases, morphology of microconstituents like ferrite plus carbide aggregates and precipitates in this kind of steels is essential to the improvement of mechanical strength, toughness and weldability. In this context, a work of microestrutural characterization of a microalloyed steel for API X80 pipelines was carried out both on an as-received steel sample as in samples submitted to different cooling conditions. The kinetics of austenite transformations was investigated using dilatometric experiments, identifying start and end of the phase transformations as well as the time spent temperatures for the phase transformations at each cooling rate. The temperature and time curves obtained as a function of the cooling rates allowed the determination of a Continuous Cooling Transformation curve (CCT). The data from the CCT curve was compared with the microstructures of each sample through optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), scanning electron microscopy with Field Emission Gun (FEG) and microhardness, characterizing the morphologic evolution of the ferritic matrix, ferrite plus carbide eutectoid aggregates (perlite and bainite) and the microconstituent martensite/austenite (MA). The microestrutural characterization of the samples was performed also using different techniques of microestrutural analysis: precipitate extraction followed by Xrays diffraction analysis, magnetic saturation and atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements. The magnetic saturation technique was developed through hysteresis curves measured with a hysteresigraph with polar pieces and Rowland ring for several ranges of magnetic field intensity. This technique allowed to detect the magnetic saturation of the steel without thermal treatment and the maximum saturation in the heat treated steels were the retained austenite has transformed. The relationship between those saturations curves allowed a determination of the retained austenite fraction in the MA microconstituent. The nanohardness was measured using a specific device coupled to a atomic force microscope (AFM). The nanohardness of different grains were compared with the hardness values from the literature in order to help identify phases and microconstituents, as well as possible precipitates.

The rapid increase in car ownership has caused rigorous issues for people living in the major cities in China, which is observe from traffic pressure, the inconvenience of city travelling, and air pollution. While the fast development of digital service platforms based on the Internet provides an alternative approach to touch the problems, leading a researchable phenomenon, online car-sharing service in China. This paper strives to explore the impact of car sharing on millennial sustainability attitudes by using the daily service on apps to ‘drive less, share more’. The paper is conducted using mixed research methods in Suzhou, China. Principally, the researchers interviewed ten car- sharing consumers during shared ride. To ensure the creditability and reliability, the paper collected 326 online survey responses from local car-sharing platforms as comparable data. The results show that most millennials agree car-sharing service makes their traffic modes more convenient, and taking shared ride more compared to self-driving has a significant influence on social and environmental issues in cities. Also, some respondents present willingness or already take actions on giving up car ownerships. However, the result also emphasises the fundamental reasons for millennials to participate in car-sharing service, which is personalised service and reasonable price. The paper closes with three outcomes, sharing economy as ‘Development’, digital service as ‘Innovation’, and sustainability as ‘The future’. They not only enrich the current literature research between Millennials and sharing economy, but also promote further strategies for car-sharing companies with empirical data.

Studien är ett samarbete med badrumsföretaget SVEDBERGS. Syftet med denna studie är att ge rekommendationer till SVEDBERGS kunder avseende färgtemperatur som är lämpligast i badrummet. I badrummet sker det olika aktiviteter som sminkning/rakning eller bad, därför är det viktigt att kunna anpassa belysningen för att bidra med en bra komfort till användarna. Med LED-ljuskällan finns det möjlighet att reglera färgtemperaturer i detalj. Denna studie kommer därför att undersöka vilken färgtemperatur som är lämpligast till olika badrumsaktiviteter. Tidigare studier tyder på att kalla färgtemperaturer från 4000 Kelvin (K) och uppåt är mera lämpliga som arbetsljus medan varma färgtemperaturer från 2700K till 4000K är mera lämpliga som avslappningsljus. Mer specifikt är studiens frågeställningar: ”Vilken färgtemperatur från 2700K till 6400K är lämpligast till sminkning/rakning?” och ”Vilken färgtemperatur från 2700K till 6400K är lämpligast till bad?” Studien genomfördes genom ett experiment med 25 stycken försökspersoner varav 15 stycken kvinnor och 10 stycken män och medelåldern var i åldersspannet 40–49år. Under experimentets gång fick försökspersonerna utvärdera belysningens inställning med fokus på färgtemperatur. Experimentet utfördes som två aktiviteter (sminkning/rakning och bad) och bestod av tre scenarios av färgtemperatur (2500K; 4000K; 6400K) som hade två olika ordningsföljder (dvs. 2700K/4000K/6400K och 6400K/2700K/4000K). Ordningsföljden bestämdes systematiskt i experimentet. Ett fjärde scenario i experimentet användes då försökspersonerna själva valde vilken färgtemperatur de föredrog utan att veta vilket exakt metriskt värde denna hade. Experimentet använde både kvalitativa och kvantitativa metoder som innefattade enkätfrågor i skalnivåer för de två aktiviteterna och de tre scenarios, samt en fråga med öppet svarsalternativ där försökspersonerna hade möjlighet att utveckla sina svar. Utifrån resultaten i denna studie rekommenderas en belysning där både färgtemperatur och intensitet kan regleras. Resultaten visar att vid aktiviteten sminkning/rakning rekommenderas en färgtemperatur på 4000K–4700K och vid aktiviteten bad rekommenderas en färgtemperatur på 2500K–3000K. Badrumsbelysning som kan regleras utifrån brukarnas aktiviteter och behov har den största potentialen att vara socialt hållbar för SVEDBERGS slutkunder eftersom den möjliggör att brukarna själva kan välja lämplig färgtemperatur.

Deutschsprachige Zusammenfassung Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. med. Titel: Mögliche Korrelation zwischen dem Stadium der altersabhängigen Makuladegeneration und der zentralen Hornhautdicke eingereicht von: Christian Koch angefertigt an der: Klinik und Poliklinik für Augenheilkunde Universität Leipzig betreut von: Professor Dr. med. Peter Wiedemann Klinik und Poliklinik für Augenheilkunde Universität Leipzig Monat und Jahr: Juni 2015 Annahme: Es soll ein statistischer Zusammenhang zwischen der zentralen Hornhautdicke in der Pupillenmitte mit dem nicht exsudativen frühen Stadium der AMD, dem exsudativen späten Stadium der AMD und einer Kontrollgruppe überprüft werden. Methodik: Die erste Studiengruppe stellten 48 Augen von 48 Patienten mit einer Form der frühen AMD dar (Durchschnittsalter 75,4 Jahre, 70,8% der Probanden waren Frauen). Die zweite Studiengruppe bildeten 49 Augen von 49 Patienten mit einer Form der späten AMD (Durchschnittsalter 79,8 Jahre, 59,2% der Probanden waren Frauen). Als Kontrollgruppe wurden 49 Augen von 49 Individuen ohne retinale oder korneale Erkrankungen genutzt (Durchschnittsalter 68,9 Jahre, 59,2% der Probanden waren Frauen). Die Vermessung der Hornhautdicke in Pupillenmitte im Sinne der Hornhautmittendicke erfolgte als Pachymetrie mit der Oculus Pentacam. Ergebnisse: Die durchschnittliche zentrale Hornhautdicke betrug bei der Kontrollgruppe 552,76 μm (SD 36,27 μm), bei der nicht exsudativen Gruppe 552,19 μm (SD 31,27 μm) und bei der exsudativen Gruppe 553,73 μm (SD 33,11 μm). Die Extrempunkte der Kontrollgruppe lagen bei 483 und 640 μm, der Gruppe der nicht exsudativen AMD bei 480 und 617 μm und Minimum und Maximum der exsudativen Gruppe bei 473 und 617 μm. Es gab keine statistisch signifikanten Unterschiede im arithmetischen Mittel der zentralen Hornhautdicke in Pupillenmitte bei der Studiengruppe mit früher AMD im Vergleich mit der Studiengruppe mit später AMD und jeweils im Vergleich zur Kontrollgruppe (P > 0,05). Schlussfolgerung: Die Messwerte der zentralen Hornhautdicke bei Patienten mit früher AMD, später AMD und Kontrollindividuen unterscheiden sich nicht. Die Erhebung der Hornhautmittendicke bietet somit keine Screeningmöglichkeit zur Erkennung einer AMD. / English Abstract Central corneal thickness in patients with AMD Koch, C.; Jochmann, C.; Wiedemann, P. University of Leipzig, Department of Ophthalmology and Eye Hospital, Leipzig, Germany Purpose: To evaluate central corneal thickness in patients with AMD in the early and late phase and a control group. Method: The first study group was made up of 48 eyes of 48 patients with early AMD (mean age 75.4 years, 70.8 % women), the second study group was made up of 49 eyes of 49 patients with late AMD (mean age 79.8 years, 59.2 % women). 49 eyes of 49 individuals without any retinal or corneal damage (mean age 68.9 years, 59.2 % women) were used as control group. The central corneal thickness was measured with the Oculus Pentacam pachymetry. Results: The mean central corneal thickness in early non-exudative AMD group was found to be 552.19 μm (SD 31.27 μm), while the mean central corneal thickness in the late exudative AMD group was measured as 553.73 μm (SD 33.11 μm). The control group had a mean central corneal thickness of 552.76 μm (SD 36.27 μm). There were no statistically significant differences in the mean central corneal thickness in the early non-exudative AMD group in comparison with the late exudative AMD group and each of them compared to the control group (P > 0,05). Conclusion: The central corneal thickness measurements do not differ in patients with early non-exudative AMD, late exudative AMD and control subjects.