Revised; Originally Published: 2000 / 8 pp. / Whether you are beginning a new landscape or renovating an existing one, planning ahead can prevent many problems. The majority of maintenance requirements and plant problems result from either selecting the wrong kind of plant for a location or planting an inferior specimen of the selected plant type. In other words, there are two decisions to be made: ▪ What species, or kind, of tree are you going to buy — an oak, pine, mesquite, or acacia? ▪ Assuming you decide on an oak, which one in the row of oaks at the nursery are you going to buy? The first decision is called Plant Selection and the second is Selecting Plants. Our goal is to install the right plant in the right place. This publication will cover the factors involved in making good decisions to achieve this goal.

Globalization of the world’s economy, containerization, intermodalism and specialization have reshaped transport systems and the industries that are considered crucial for the international distribution of goods such as the port industry. Simultaneously, economies of location, economies of scope, economies of scale, optimization of production factors, and clustering of industries have triggered port regionalization and inland integration of port services especially those provided by container terminals. In this integration dry ports have emerged as a vital intermodal platform for the effective and efficient distribution of containerized cargo. Dry ports have enabled port and hinterland expansion increasing the competitiveness of container terminals at seaports. In consequence, container terminals and dry ports are establishing formal and informal relationships to strengthen the competitiveness of their hinterlands and to improve their role in the physical distribution of goods. This study assesses the characteristics of relationships between container terminals and dry ports. Such assessment is conducted based on a set of relationship characteristics proposed in a relationship assessment model for customer/supplier, in which dry ports are given the role of suppliers of port services to container terminals. In addition, the research assesses the impact of the relationships between container terminals and dry ports on inter-port competition. The main findings of the research led to conclude relationships between container terminals and dry ports are characterized by medium mutuality, low particularity, low co-operation, low conflict, low intensity, low interpersonal inconsistency, high power/dependence and medium trust. Additionally, it was concluded that such relationship characteristics impact inter-port competition in two main ways. In one hand by driving container terminals to maximize the utilization of dry port’s capabilities such as container transport/delivery, container storage, customs clearance, information systems and intermodal connections to industrial clusters. On the other hand, by constructing channels of interaction through which dry port’s benefits for hinterlands such as increase of container terminal capacity, reduction of road congestion, increase of modal shift and hinterland expansion are used as leverage in competition for containerized cargo.

ssp-1 is a seed storage protein mutant which is deficient in one of the major seed storage proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana, the 12S cruciferins. To determine if this mutant can drive a higher level expression of a transgene than that found in wild type, the mutant was transformed with the phytohemagglutinin (PHA) gene and single copy PHA homozygotes were identified. These PHA transformants were crossed to wild type so that each PHA gene would be in the same copy number and chromosomal context in a wild type background. Immunoblotting was employed to compare the PHA levels of the single copy transformants in both genetic backgrounds. PHA levels ranged from 4.52% to 7.7% of the total protein in transformants. Two of the transformants showed 30.33% and 44.18% more PHA than that of their backcross. Therefore, a mutant such as ssp-1 may provide a means for overexpression of foreign proteins.

Baigiamajame magistro darbe nagrinėjamos krovinių vežimo iš Kinijos į Europą geležinkelių transportu problemos, įvairių autorių nuomonė šia tema. Išnagrinėta esama krovinių vežimo iš Kinijos į Europą jūrų ir geležinkelių transportu situacija ir dėl to atsirandančios problemos, išanalizuotos esamos geležinkelių transporto panaudojimo galimybės tokių krovinių vežimo srityje. Baigiamajame darbe skaičiuojamas geležinkelio linijų, esančių tarp Kinijos ir Europos, krovinių metinis pralaidumas, nustatomos mažiausią pajėgumą turinčios vietos, galimi vežti srautai lyginami su esamais jūrų transporto srautais. Nustatomas šių pajėgumų didinimo planas, apskaičiuojamas jam reikalingas investicijų poreikis. Vertinant projekto investicijų efektyvumą, apskaičiuojama projekto dabartinė grynoji vertė, vidinė pelno norma, investicijų rentabilumo indeksas ir atsipirkimo laikas. Taip pat atliekamas šio projekto ekonominis įvertinimas, apskaičiuojant finansinę naudą, kurią patirs Europoje esantys krovinių gavėjai dėl sutrumpėjusio krovinių pristatymo laiko, bei prognozuojamą naudą Lietuvai dėl sukurtų naujų darbo vietų ir papildomų mokesčių į biudžetą. Išnagrinėjus teorinius ir praktinius krovinių vežimo iš Kinijos į Europą geležinkelių transportu aspektus, pateikiamos baigiamojo darbo išvados ir pasiūlymai. / The final master thesis analyses the problems and scientific literature on freight shipment by rail from China to Europe. The work contains the analysis of the current situation and emerging problems of freight shipment by sea and rail from China to Europe. It also includes an investigation of railway infrastructure abilities to manage these carriages. The work contains the calculation of cargo throughput of railway lines between China and Europe. It also determines the weakest links in these lines. In addition, the possible cargo turnover is compared with sea freight turnover. After this, the project of throughput increasing is taken, including the calculation of desirable investment. Analyzing the effectiveness of this investment project, net present value, internal return rate and investment profitableness index are calculated. The analysis also includes economical assessment, identifying financial benefit to freight receivers in Europe, which appears from saved time of cargo distribution from China. What is more, the benefit Lithuania gets from new workplaces and additional budget income is discussed. Having analyzed the theoretical and practical aspects of freight shipment by rail from China to Europe, the conclusions and proposals are presented.

What is the role of a port? It is a place that handles ships and cargo with operational efficiency. For this reason, ports must be seen as elements in value-driven chain systems or in value chain constellations. They deliver value to shippers and to third party service providers; customer segmentation and targeting is on the basis of a clearly specified value for itself and for the chain in which it is embedded. Ports no longer operate in an insulated environment. They face the same competitive forces that companies in other industries experience. There is rivalry among existing competitors, continuing threat of new entrants, potential for global substitutes, presence of powerful customers and powerful supplies. Since the early 1980s, moves to rapidly liberalise trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have strongly influenced policy makers in many developing countries in their thinking about this challenge. Openness to international market forces and competition was expected to allow those countries to alter both the pace and the pattern of their participation in international trade, thereby overcoming balance-ofpayments problems and accelerating growth, to catch up with industrial countries. Today, the Port of Durban is the clear African leader in total container throughput. In the world port league for 2000 established by Containerisation International Yearbook 2001, Durban was in 44th position. The Port of Durban is an important gateway with regards to general cargo flows especially since the port's goal is to become a hub port in the Southern Africa. It has great economic value for the city and the country at large. It can be seen that the poor economic and operational efficiency of the port leads to poor overall economic growth for the nation. It is therefore desirable to ensure that the terminal is always operating at optimum operating efficiency with the required infrastructure and capacity in place. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, 2003.

The study investigates, with an intension to establish, the strategic significance of concessioning of the Durban Container Terminal in the Port of Durban. A strategic perspective firstly considers the concessioning in the successful terminal of the world from a developed to a developing perspective, the reasons for concessioning, the post-concessioned realization advantages and disadvantages, and the effects on the country concerned. The attempts to concession the Durban Container Terminal by the Minister of Public Enterprises has been withdrawn in 2004 for reason of lack of clarity on many issues and lobbying in this regard from the current terminal operator. There are many factors used to determine why and when and how to concession if such host government economic policy is strategic. Discussions include stakeholder risks and concerns of concessioning. Concessioning is managed by the concessioning agreement, which includes a understanding of performance and risks to the concessionaire and the host government, thereby providing opportunity for both parties to mitigate these risks. Some risks are generic to concessioning for example concessionaires performance, equipment performance etc., and some are country specific for example, host government policies, relationship between host government and multinationals trading bloc, labour unions and factors of productions, is reviewed and evaluated in accordance with a with respect to all stakeholders. In the case of developed countries, with large-scale enterprises looking to internationalise through for example concessioning in a developing country may result in a power struggle. From a host country perspective, when a first world multinational corporation purchases a national asset in a developing country, many conditions need be put in place so that the integrity through management of risk is maintained to protect the developing country from exploitation of resources. South Africa is a developing country and is a relatively small player in world trade, which suggests a weak position in world trade. South Africa from a trade volume perspective does not significant influence on current world trade rules as a single country. The World Trade Organization (WTO) provides international requirements on trading rules with the world's richest countries and trading blocs. The World Bank also supports these rules. The external environmental influences will include the WTO, World Bank and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Local country specific influences are promulgated through the constitution of South Africa and supported through guidelines in NEPAD (New Partnerships for Africa's Development), AU (African Union), National Government Economic Policy to balance industry protection perceived as a barrier to market entry by a foreign multinational corporation. The decision on whether to proceed with concessioning or not will be determined through interpretation of the strategic evaluation of concessioning. This will suggest whether concessioning (privatisation) of state assets or not and will affect the current operator Durban Container Terminal. Concessioning is a real threat to the current operator's survival and depending on the type of concessioning agreement signed may result in the operator ceasing to exist. In evaluating the balance of power of international trade and the country specific requirements respectively, a question arises. It is very complex and can be asked as follows: Do we as South Africans stand tall in developing and implementing our own economic policy or do we open up our markets which may put South African state assets in hands of the large multinationals who will have free reign to possibly monopolize and speculate within our "fragile" economy. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

This thesis explores the inverse problem of optical tomography applied to two-dimensional heterogeneous domains. The neutral particle transport equation was used as the forward model to simulate how neutral particles stream through and interact within these heterogeneous domains. A constrained optimization technique that uses Newton's method served as the basis of the inverse problem. The capabilities and limitations of the presented method were explored through various two-dimensional domains. The major factors that influenced the ability of the optimization method to reconstruct the cross sections of these domains included the locations of the sources used to illuminate the domains, the number of separate experiments used in the reconstruction, the locations where measurements were collected, the optical thickness of the domain, the amount of signal noise and signal bias applied to the measurements, and the initial guess for the cross section distribution. All of these factors were explored for problems with and without scattering. Increasing the number of sources, measurements and experiments used in the reconstruction generally produced more successful reconstructions with less error. Using more sources, experiments and measurements also allowed for optically thicker domains to be reconstructed. The maximum optical thickness that could be reconstructed with this method was ten mean free paths for pure absorber domains and two mean free paths for domains with scattering. Applying signal noise and signal bias to the measured fluxes produced more error in the reconstructed image. Generally, Newton's method was more successful at reconstructing domains from an initial guess for the cross sections that was greater in magnitude than their true values than from an initial guess that was lower in magnitude.

ssp-1 is a seed storage protein mutant which is deficient in one of the major seed storage proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana, the 12S cruciferins. To determine if this mutant can drive a higher level expression of a transgene than that found in wild type, the mutant was transformed with the phytohemagglutinin (PHA) gene and single copy PHA homozygotes were identified. These PHA transformants were crossed to wild type so that each PHA gene would be in the same copy number and chromosomal context in a wild type background. Immunoblotting was employed to compare the PHA levels of the single copy transformants in both genetic backgrounds. PHA levels ranged from 4.52% to 7.7% of the total protein in transformants. Two of the transformants showed 30.33% and 44.18% more PHA than that of their backcross. Therefore, a mutant such as ssp-1 may provide a means for overexpression of foreign proteins.

Diss. (sammanfattning). Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2003. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-81).