This dissertation investigates the idea of creating an engaging public place by introducing productive activity in a dormant area of Mamelodi where the effects of Pendulum migration and waste accumulation have caused public spaces to become inaccessible and functional only as spaces of departure. The site selection will involve looking for a space with a highly layered construct that captures the essence of what Mamelodi has become overtime. This proposed programme will aid in the investigation of testing whether a dormant space has the potential to inspire transformation and change in the social and public realm of this informal settlement. Through the theoretical premise of Place Making, the investigation will focus on whether social spaces, activity generators, existing contexts and past events could be layered to create a functional public place. The hierarchy and transition of spaces from one to another could allow one to understand the process of change on site, as well as the process of change in terms of waste material that is reused and transformed into something useful. This thesis document explores the idea of a building as a threshold and solvent of different spaces that would normally be split from each other. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第18049号 / 理博第3927号 / 新制||理||1566(附属図書館) / 30907 / 京都大学大学院理学研究科数学・数理解析専攻 / (主査)教授 望月 新一, 教授 玉川 安騎男, 講師 星 裕一郎 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

La thèse analyse la promotion de l'électricité produite à partir de sources renouvelables par la régulation économique. Elle combine la recherche existante en économie, sciences politiques et droit. Les principaux apports scientifiques nouveaux par rapport à la recherche existante sont les suivants : - L'échec des efforts de la Commission européenne d'harmoniser les systèmes de soutien au niveau de l'UE s'explique par une alliance (de prime abord improbable) des OGN "vertes" et des producteurs d'électricité verte, soucieux de protéger le système des prix garantis par l'État, ainsi que des États membres, soucieux du respect du principe de subsidiarité. - Contrairement à l'avis dominant en sciences économique, des prix minima garantis, arrêté au niveau de 'UE, constituent la politique règlementaire la plus efficient. - La première analyse compréhensive de la pratique décisionnelle de la Commission européenne eu matière d'aide d'État et la jurisprudence de la Court depuis 1990 montre que, contrairement à l'avis dominant dans la recherche juridique, les systèmes de soutien de la plupart des États membres constituent des aides d'État, car l'arrêt PreussenElektra a un champ d'application beaucoup plus restreint que généralement admis. - Les règles de l'OMC, du Traité sur la Charte de l'Énergie, du droit des aides d'État et du marché intérieur interagissent d'une manière qui n'a pas encore été pleinement compris par la littérature juridique. - Des parallélismes surprenants au débat juridique en Europe existent dans le débat juridique aux États-Unis. Cependant, il n'ont pas été mis en exergue par les juristes. Ainsi, la "dormant commerce clause" soumet les régimes de soutien au États-Unis à des contraintes similaires que les règles du marché intérieur; et le contrôle fédéral de la régulation des prix sous le Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) ressemble au contrôle des aides d'État. / The thesis analyses the promotion of electricity from renewable energy sources by regulatory policies, bringing together the existing research in economics, political science and law. The main new findings compared to the existing research are: The failure of the Commission's attempts to harmonize support schemes al the EU level is due to an (at first sight: unlikely) alliance of green NGO and renewable electricity producers, concerned about protecting fixed purchase prices, and Member States, concerned about subsidiarity; Contrary to the dominating view in the economic literature, fixed purchase prices, set at the EU level, are the most efficient regulatory option; The first comprehensive analysis of the Commission's decision practice and the Court's case law on support schemes under EU State aid rules since 1990 shows that, contrary to the dominating view in legal writing, the support schemes of most Member States do constitute State aid, because PreussenElektra has a much narrower scope than generally thought. WTO rules, the Energy Charter Treaty, and EU State aid and internal market rules interact in ways which have thus far not been analyzed in detail in the legal literature. Surprising parallelisms exist in the legal debate in the US and in the EU, which have thus far been widely overlooked by legal scholars: the "dormant commerce clause" puts very similar constraints on State support schemes as internal market rules; and federal control on price regulation under the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) in the US acts similarly to State aid control in the EU.

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2010

This study investigates how seven Chinese sentence-final particles (SFP le, ne1, ma, ne2, ba1, ba2 and a; hereafter SFP) and their features are represented in English speakers’ L2 Chinese. In this research, SFPs are analysed as heads instantiating different positions in the CP domain (Paul 2009, 2014, 2015), which are head-final, and in particular, they are considered to carry semantic, syntactic and discourse features. As there is no SFP in English, the features on Chinese SFPs are realised by a variety of syntactic means. Through a proficiency test and six experimental tasks, data from 76 participants (including 18 Chinese native speakers, 20 low-intermediate learners, 20 high-intermediate learners and 18 advanced learners) were collected. Results show that English-speaking L2 learners can easily establish the basic syntactic structure of Chinese SFPs and successfully acquire the features attached to SFPs ma, ba1 and a. However, they have significant difficulty in acquiring the features attached to SFPs le, ne1, ne2 and ba2. In general, syntactic features on Chinese SFPs are intact in L2 grammars, whereas semantic features (i.e. syntax-semantics interfaces) are very vulnerable. In addition, it is found that not all discourse features (syntax-discourse interfaces) are problematic. Findings indicate that both L1 grammar (i.e. L1 transfer) and L2 input (frequency, saliency and complexity) play important roles in affecting learners’ acquisition of the features attached to Chinese SFPs. In particular, learners seem to transfer all feature sets from their L1 English. Semantic features that have been transferred from their L1 English but that are neither confirmed nor disconfirmed by the Chinese input have become dormant in the L2 Chinese, which complements the Dormant Feature Hypothesis (Yuan 2014). Furthermore, the homomorphous SFPs which exhibit a ‘one-to-many’ form-meaning connection are believed to complicate learners’ recognition and acquisition of relevant features on SFPs. It is also demonstrated that the mapping of a feature across CP domains (i.e. from a two-CP structure to a one-CP structure) can be problematic and difficult. The discourse feature needs to be reassembled in L2 grammars, which advances the arguments of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere 2008, 2009a,b).

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require electricity providers to supply a minimum fixed percentage or total quantity of customer load from designated renewable energy resources by a given date. These policies have become increasingly prevalent in the past decade as state governments seek to increase the use of renewable energy sources. As a policy tool, RPS provide a cost-effective, market-based approach for meeting targets which promote greater use of renewable energy in both regulated and deregulated markets. To facilitate the obtainment of Renewable Portfolio Standards, most states allow the trading of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). RECs represent the environmental attributes of renewable energy generation which are decoupled from the generated power. These credits are created along with the generation of renewable energy, decoupled from energy generation, tracked by regional systems, and eventually purchased by retail suppliers to fulfill their RPS obligations. As of April 2010, RPS have been passed into law in 29 states and Washington D.C. and an additional 6 states have non-mandatory renewable portfolio goals however the U.S. government has yet to enact a Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard. Although the final requirements and details of a Federal RPS are undecided, federal standards would be unlikely to preempt or override state programs which are already in place. A key concern regarding the passage of a federal RPS is that a national REC market would result in a shift of wealth from states with few renewable energy resources and limited resource potential to regions richer in renewable resources. Because of the implications that a federal renewable portfolio standard would have on the economy, the environment, and the equitable treatment of all the states, many issues and concerns must be resolved before federal standards will be passed into law. A theoretical case study for an electric utility generation planning decision that includes obligations to meet Renewable Portfolio Standard is presented here. A framework is provided that allows decision makers and strategic planning teams to: assess their business situation, identify objectives of generation planning, determine the relative weights of the objectives, recognize tradeoffs, and create an efficient portfolio using Portfolio Theory. The case study follows the business situation for Austin Energy as it seeks to meet Texas State RPS and mandates set by Austin City Council and prepares for potential National RPS legislation. / text

Det finns många indikationer på att Sveriges bostadsmarknad fungerar dåligt och statistik från Boverket visar att många kommuner upplever ett bostadsunderskott. Samtidigt indikerar statistik från Statistiska centralbyrån att stora delar av Sveriges befintliga bostadsbestånd används ineffektivt. Bostadspriserna har de senaste decennierna ökat kraftigt och i kombination med att många hushåll bor länge i sina bostäder har stora latenta skatteskulder byggts upp runt om i Sveriges kommuner. En bidragande faktor som påverkar ett hushålls vilja att flytta är storleken på transaktionskostnaderna som uppkommer i samband med en fastighetsförsäljning. En stor del av dessa transaktionskostnader utgörs av kapitalvinstskatten som måste betalas när bostaden säljs med vinst. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för den svenska bostadsmarknaden genom att kartlägga latent skatteskuld, flyttkostnader i procent av priset och bostadsrörligheten i Sveriges kommuner. Studien undersöker även om det finns ett samband mellan höga flyttkostnader och låg bostadsrörlighet. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en kvantitativ metod där data från Statistiska centralbyrån, Skatteverket och Valueguard använts för att skapa en databas över Sveriges kommuner. Studiens resultat visar att de högsta latenta skatteskulderna återfinns i storstäderna Stockholm, Göteborg och Malmö medan kommunerna med högst flyttkostnad i procent av priset för småhusbeståndet är Habo, Åre och Härjedalen. Kommunerna Orsa, Grästorp och Mullsjö har de högsta flyttkostnaderna i procent av priset vad gäller bostadsrättsbeståndet. Störst andel underutnyttjat småhusbestånd finns i kommunerna Malung-Sälen, Härjedalen och Åre där nästan vartannat småhus står tomt medan kommunerna med störst andel underutnyttjat bostadsrättsbestånd är Nordanstig, Berg och Åre. Studien kan inte bevisa att det finns ett positivt samband mellan höga flyttkostnader och låg rörlighet på bostadsmarknaden. / There are many indications that the Swedish housing market is functioning inefficiently, and statistics from the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning show that many municipalities are experiencing a housing deficit. Simultaneously, statistics from Statistics Sweden indicate that large parts of Sweden's existing housing stock are underutilized. Seeing as housing prices have steadily increased during the last decades, combined with the fact that many households live in their houses for many years, a large dormant tax debt has been built up in the Swedish municipalities. One factor affecting the household’s willingness to move is the size of the transaction costs generated by the sale of the property. A large part of the transaction costs includes the capital gains tax if the residence is sold at a profit.  The purpose of this study is to increase the knowledge of the Swedish housing market by mapping the dormant tax debt, moving costs as a percentage of the price and residential mobility in the Swedish municipalities. The study thus examines whether there is a relationship between high moving costs and low residential mobility. The study applies a quantitative approach where data from Statistics Sweden, The Swedish Tax Agency and Valueguard are used to create a dataset of the Swedish municipalities. The results of the study show that the highest dormant tax debt is found in the major cities Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, while the municipalities with the highest moving costs as a percentage of the price of the single-family houses are found in Habo, Åre and Härjedalen. The municipalities of Orsa, Grästorp and Mullsjö show the highest moving costs as a percentage of the price for the condominium housing stock. The largest proportion of underutilized single-family houses is found in the municipalities Malung-Sälen, Härjedalen and Åre, where half of the single-family houses were empty, while the municipalities with the most underutilized condominium housing stock are Nordanstig, Berg and Åre. The study could however not show that there is a positive relationship between high moving costs and low mobility in the housing market.

No description available.

Zoysiagrass (Zoysia spp.) is utilized as a warm-season turfgrass because of its density, visual quality, stress tolerance, and reduced input requirements. Turf managers often exploit winter dormancy in warm-season turfgrass to apply nonselective herbicides such as glyphosate and glufosinate to control winter annual weeds. Although this weed control strategy is common in bermudagrass (Cynodon spp.), it has been less adopted in zoysiagrass due to unexplainable turf injury. Many university extension publications recommend against applying nonselective herbicides to dormant zoysiagrass despite promotional language found in a few peer-reviewed publications and product labels. Previous researchers have used vague terminology such as "applied to dormant zoysiagrass" or "applied prior to zoysiagrass green-up" to describe herbicide application timings. These ambiguous terms have led to confusion since zoysiagrass typically has subcanopy green leaves and stems throughout the winter dormancy period. No research has sought to explain why some turfgrass managers are observing zoysiagrass injury when the literature only offers evidence that these herbicides do not injure dormant zoysiagrass. We sought to explore various herbicides, prevailing temperatures surrounding application, heat unit based application timings, and spray penetration into zoysiagrass canopies as possible contributors to zoysiagrass injury. The results indicated that a wide range of herbicides may be safely used in dormant zoysiagrass. However, as zoysiagrass begins to produce more green leaves, herbicides such as metsulfuron, glyphosate, glufosinate, flumioxazin, and diquat become too injurious. Glufosinate was consistently more injurious regardless of application timing than glyphosate and other herbicides. When temperatures were 10 °C for 7 d following treatment, a delayed effect of glyphosate and glufosinate effect on digitally-assessed green cover loss was noted on zoysiagrass sprigs. In subsequent studies on turf plugs, a 14-d incubation period at 10 °C reduced glyphosate but not glufosinate effects on turf green color reduction. Glyphosate applied at 125, and 200 GDD5C can safely be applied to zoysiagrass while glufosinate applied at the same timings caused inconsistent and often unacceptable zoysiagrass injury in field studies conducted at Blacksburg, VA, Starkville, MS, and Virginia Beach, VA. Zoysiagrass green leaf density was described as a function of accumulated heat units consistently across years and locations but variably by turf mowing height. Turf normalized difference vegetative index was primarily governed by green turf cover but reduced by herbicide treatments, especially when applied at greater than 200 GDD5C. Substantial spray deposition occurred to subcanopy tissue regardless of nozzle type, pressure and height above the zoysiagrass canopy based on spectrophotometric assessment of a colorant admixture. However, increasing nozzle height above the turf canopy and avoiding air induction type nozzles significantly reduced the percentage of green tissue exposed at lower canopy levels. Absorption of radio-labeled glyphosate and glufosinate was up to four times greater when exposed to zoysiagrass stems compared to leaves. Glyphosate translocated more than glufosinate and both herbicides moved more readily from stem to leaf than from leaf to stem / Doctor of Philosophy / Zoysiagrass (Zoysia spp.) is utilized as a warm-season turfgrass because of its density, visual quality, stress tolerance, and reduced input requirements. Being that zoysiagrass is a warm-season turfgrass, it enters a dormancy period during the winter months. During this period, zoysiagrasses' active growth is halted, and leaves lose their green color and turn a golden-brown color. The winter dormancy period presents turfgrass managers with a unique opportunity to apply nonselective herbicides such as glyphosate and glufosinate to control a broad spectrum of winter annual weeds. Although this weed control strategy is common in bermudagrass (Cynodon spp.), it has been less adopted in zoysiagrass due to turfgrass managers observing unexplainable turfgrass injury. Many university extension publications recommend against applying nonselective herbicides to dormant zoysiagrass despite language found in peer-reviewed publications and product labels suggesting they could be safely applied. Previous researchers have used vague terminology such as "applied to dormant zoysiagrass" or "applied prior to zoysiagrass green-up" to describe herbicide application timings. These terms have led to confusion about when to make these applications since zoysiagrass typically has subcanopy green leaves and stems throughout the winter dormancy period. No research has sought to explain why some turfgrass managers observe zoysiagrass injury when the literature only offers evidence that these herbicides do not injure dormant zoysiagrass. Research projects were designed to explore various herbicides, temperatures surrounding herbicide applications, application timings, and spray penetration into zoysiagrass canopies as possible contributors to zoysiagrass injury. The results indicated that a wide range of herbicides may be safely used in dormant and semidormant zoysiagrass. However, as zoysiagrass begins to produce more green leaves and stems, herbicides such as metsulfuron, glyphosate, glufosinate, flumioxazin, and diquat become too injurious and should be avoided. Across multiple research studies, glufosinate was consistently more injurious regardless of application timing than glyphosate and other herbicides. When temperatures were 10 °C for 7-d following treatment, it delayed zoysaigrass response to glyphosate and glufosinate. In a subsequent study, when temperatures were at 10 °C for a 14-d period, glyphosate and the nontreated reached 50% green cover at the same time, which suggests cold temperatures could mitigate glyphosate injury on zoysiagrass over a 14-d period. The 10 ° temperature only delayed glufosinate injury on zoysiagrass, and no safening was observed. The results also indicated that as temperatures increased, glyphosate and glufosinate rate in which injury was observed increased on the zoysiagrass. Glyphosate applied at 125, and 200 GDD5C can safely be applied to zoysiagrass while glufosinate applied at the same timings caused inconsistent and often unacceptable zoysiagrass injury in field studies conducted at Blacksburg, VA, Starkville, MS, and Virginia Beach, VA. Zoysiagrass injury increased when glyphosate and glufosinate were applied later into the spring when more green leaves were present regardless of location. Accumulated heat units and zoysiagrass green leaf density were closely related, indicating that accumulated heat units could be a useful tool for turfgrass managers to track zoysiagrass spring green-up. Substantial spray deposition was found on subcanopy zoysiagrass leaves and stems regardless of nozzle type, pressure, and height above the zoysiagrass canopy based on recovered colorant at the upper, middle and lower levels of the zoysiagrass canopy. However, avoiding air induction-type nozzles and raising spray height may slightly decrease penetration of spray droplets into a zoysiagrass subcanopy, but a large percentage of droplets still reached the middle and lower canopy layers in this research. Absorption of radio-labeled glyphosate and glufosinate was up to four times greater when applied directly to zoysiagrass stolen compared to leaves. Glyphosate translocated more than glufosinate, and both herbicides moved more readily from stem to leaf than from leaf to stem. These data suggest limiting the number of green zoysiagrass leaves at application would be an effective method to avoid injury zoysiagrass when applying nonselective herbicides

Cacti (Cactaceae) represent a family of highly specialized angiosperm plants with a native range of distribution restricted to the American continents. Columnar cacti of the sub-family Cactoideae evolved in adaptation to their arid or semi-arid habitats characteristics that distinguish them from most other dicot plants, e.g. the stem succulence with a strongly vascularized storage parenchyma and the presence of the spine wearing areoles. Although cacti have been in cultivation since the discovery of America, some studies even suggest the agricultural use in pre-colombian times, and many scientific investigations were carried out on the functional morphology and anatomy with regard to biomechanical adaptations of the found structures, no research focused on the branch-stem attachment. The most conspicuous features of such a ramification are the pronounced constrictions at the branch-stem junctions that are also present in the lignified vascular structures within the succulent cortex. Based on Finite Element Analyses of ramification models it could be demonstrated that these indentations in the region of high flexural and torsional stresses are not regions of structural weakness, e.g. allowing vegetative propagation. On the contrary, they can be regarded as anatomical adaptations to increase the stability by fine-tuning the stress state and stress directions in the junction along prevalent fiber directions. The development of the woody support structure within the succulent cortex of the parental shoot can be traced back to the leaf and bud traces of the dormant axillary buds. Surprisingly, these initials also develop into another woody structure supporting the flowers of the cacti. As these two support structures differ significantly in their macroscopic and microscopic anatomy and as they develop from the same initial state as leaf/bud traces, another objective of this work was to analyze the secondary growth of the two structures with traditional botanic investigation methods. The results of these investigations reveal a wood dimorphism consisting of an early parenchymatous phase followed later by fibrous wood in both kind of support structure. In vegetative branches, the woody support structures have the typical ringlike arrangement as found in the stele of the parental shoot, whereas the flower support structures have a reticular arrangement of interconnected woody strands. This fundamentally different anatomy of the support structures results from the formation of an interfascicular cambium between the leaf/bud traces when a vegetative branch forms or its absence in the case of a flower. After shedding light on the functional morphology and anatomy of the cactus ramification and their development the question arises if the found load adaptation strategies may serve to improve technical fiber composite structures analogue to the design recommendation developed from the biomechanical analyses of tree ramifications. Such a biomimetic transfer from the cactus ramification as biological role model to a technical implementation and the adaptation of the fine-tuned geometric shape and arrangement of lignified strengthening tissues might contribute to the development of alternative concepts for branched fiber-reinforced composite structures within a limited design space.