The woodlice, Porcellio scaber (Latreille, 1804), is a terrestrial isopod. Its metabolic reserves and body size are important factors affecting the fitness attributes, such as survival at unfavourable conditions. The larger and heavier individuals did not survive longer than smaller individuals. Amount of glycogen and body weight (fresh and dry) appeared to be an inapplicable parameter in the observed differences among individuals during survival at low temperature. We compared three treatments (long day, short day, natural autumn conditions) of Porcellio scaber and found differences in amount of energy reserves and cryoprotectants.

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The low-rate trickling filter is the most common biological treatment process used in small and medium sized sewage works in the UK. It produces an inconsistent effluent quality, which has traditionally been related to seasonal changes in solids accumulation, grazing activity and sloughing of microbial film. The final effluent solids and, organic matter content is then too high for discharge or reuse. Given the increasingly stringent effluent standards, both in terms of quality and consistency, tertiary treatment is often required. This study was designed to investigate the key parameters affecting the performance of low-rate trickling filters and the characteristics of their effluents in terms of contaminant size, which might influence the efficiency of crossflow filtration as a tertiary treatment for the trickling filter.

Steric stabilisers were synthesised via the copolymerisation of styrene with acrylic macromonomers. The macromonomers were prepared by end capping reactions of poly 2-ethyl hexyl acrylate (PEHA) prepolymer with vinyl containing species. Preliminary reaction routes proceeded via the use of oxalyl chloride to create an acyl chloride intermediate followed by end capping with hydroxy ethyl methacrylate. This process was found to be inefficient due to the moisture sensitivity of the acyl chloride. The second route involved the direct end capping of the PEHA pre-polymer with glycidyl methacrylate (GMA). Macromonomer conversion levels were improved for the GMA route via the use of high temperatures and tertiary amine catalysts. An optimum set of conditions was achieved using 1.4 diazabicyclo [2.2.2.] octane as the catalyst and a reaction temperature of 160 QC. Non aqueous dispersion polymerisations of methyl methacrylate were performed. The factors affecting particle size in both single stage and twin stage polymerisation schemes were studied. Increases in the particle sizes of these dispersions were observed with increases in the total monomer concentration and also with decreases in the total stabiliser concentration. Increases in the particle size could also be achieved by increasing the proportion of the total monomer in the seed stage of the twin stage reaction and also by decreasing the proportion of the total stabiliser in the seed stage. The importance of the role of the seed upon the final particle size was firmly established. The rheology of these non aqueous dispersions was studied over a range of concentrations and under increasing shear stresses. At Iow and intennediate volume fractions the dispersions were observed to be predominantly Newtonian. Non-Newtonian behaviour was only observed at the extremes of the shear stress ranges studied. At high volume fractions of the dispersions non-Newtonian behaviour was observed over the range of shear stresses studied. Maximum volume fractions (~m) were calculated for these dispersions using the Kreiger-Dougherty equation. When these dispersions were blended in size ratios of 2:1 it was observed that 4 > m could be increased due to improved particle packing efficiency.

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Windowing systems offer many benefits to users, such as being able to work on multiple tasks concurrently; or working with a number of windows, each connected to different remote machines or applications. Unless these windows are managed efficiently, users can easily become overwhelmed by the number of currently open windows and lose their way round the desktop. This can lead to a state where the desktop is cluttered with windows. At this stage "window thrashing" occurs, as users begin to perform window management operations (move, resize, minimise etc.) in order to locate relevant pieces of information contained in one of several open windows.

Innovation and commercialization are crucial for the competitiveness and economic well-being of countries. Despite the importance of innovation, recent studies have showed that Canada is lagging behind other countries in terms of its innovation and commercialization performance. The claim is often made that Canada performs well in generating the knowledge needed for innovation; however, the problem lies in transforming this knowledge into commercial success. Thus, a major preoccupation is how to turnaround this weak commercialization performance. Despite the wide range of programs, policies and regulations implemented by the Canadian Government along with its provincial counterparts to engender a turnaround, little has changed in Canada’s commercialization performance. Therefore, the search for solutions continues. Given that commercialization takes place at the firm-level, this study will explore the relationship between firm-size and commercialization. Several existing studies have examined the link between innovation and firm size, but few have examined the link between commercialization and firm size. Despite the arguments supporting medium-sized firms’ ability to commercialize innovations, there is a weak empirical base that explores the position of Canadian medium-sized firms and their innovation and commercialization capabilities. This study will contribute to the existing knowledge by covering the gap in the literature concerning the role of medium-sized firms in commercialization, compared to small and large firms. This study provides evidence suggesting that small and medium-sized firms should be considered differently.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between ordinal birth position, family size, and psychiatric diagnosis, in patients at a state-mental hospital.

The frequency with which acquisitions occur in the South African business environment served as motivation to evaluate the effect of acquisition announcements on the share performance of JSE listed shares. The basis of the study was to use event study methodology to evaluate short term effects as well as to investigate size effects in acquisition announcements. Companies were grouped into small and large companies using market capitalisation as segmentation criteria. To evaluate effects on the share price and volume traded, the market demand curve for traded securities was used. It proved to be a useful tool specifically in the evaluation of smaller companies, where information asymmetry was prevalent. The shift in the demand curve was evaluated by constructing a Demand Curve Variable, which showed the direction (if any) of the change in the demand curve. Acquisition announcements by JSE listed companies over the last seven years were evaluated and confounding events were controlled for. The findings supported the fact that there exist differences in the results of the small and large company samples when making acquisition announcements, and that small companies have more pronounced negative effects subsequent to the announcement of an acquisition. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Nanoparticles (NPs) are the basis of nanotechnology and finding numerous applications in various fields such as health, electronics, environment, personal care products, transportation, and catalysis. To fulfill these functions, the nanoparticles must be synthesized, passivated to control their chemical reactivity, stabilized against aggregation and functionalized to achieve specific performances. The chemistry of metal nanoparticles especially that of noble metals (Gold, Platinum…) is a growing field. The nanoparticles have indeed different properties from those of the corresponding bulk material. These properties are largely influenced by several parameters; the most important are the size, shape, and the local environment of the nanoparticles. One of the most common synthetic methods for the preparation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is based on stabilization by citrate. Since it was reported first by Turkevich et al. in 1951, this synthetic scheme has been widely used, studied and a substantial amount of important information regarding this system has been reported in the literature. The most popular method developed by Frens for controlling the size of the noble gold nanoparticles based on citrate was achieved by varying the concentration of sodium citrate. Despite a large number of investigations focused on utilizing Cit-AuNPs, the structural details of citrate anions adsorbed on the AuNP surface are still unknown. It is known only that citrate anions “coordinate” to the metal surface by inner sphere complexation of the carboxylate groups and there are trace amounts of AuCl4−, Cl−, and OH− on the metal surface. Moreover, it is generally accepted that the ligand shell morphology of Au nanoparticles can be partly responsible for important properties such as oxidation of carbon monoxide. The use of Au-NPs in heterogeneous catalysis started mostly with Haruta who discovered the effect of particle size on the activity for carbon monoxide oxidation at low temperature. The structure of the citrate layer on the AuNP surface may be a key factor in gaining a more detailed understanding of nanoparticle formation and stabilization. This can be affecting the catalytic activity. These thoughts invited us to systematically examine the role of sodium citrate as a stabilizer of gold nanoparticles, which is the main theme of this thesis. This research is focused on three main objectives, controlling the size of the gold nanoparticles based on citrate (and other carboxylate ligands Trisodium citrate dihydrate, Isocitric Acid, Citric acid, Trimesic acid, Succinic Acid, Phthalic acid, Disodium glutarate, Tartaric Acid, Sodium acetate, Acetic Acid and Formic Acid by varying the concentration of Gold/sodium citrate, investigating the interaction of the citrate layer on the AuNP surface, and testing the activity of the Au/TiO2 catalysts for the oxidation of carbon monoxide. This thesis will be divided into five chapters. In Chapter 1, a general literature study on the various applications and methods of synthesis of Au nanoparticles is described. Then we present the main synthetic pathways of Au nanoparticles we selected. A part of the bibliographic study was given to the use of Au nanoparticles in catalysis. In Chapter 2, we give a brief description of the different experimental procedures and characterization techniques utilized over the course of the present work. The study of the size control and the interaction between gold nanoparticles and the stabilizer (carboxylate groups) was achieved by using various characterization techniques such as UV-visible spectroscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Nuclear Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). In Chapter 3, we discuss the synthesis and size control of Au nanoparticles by following the growth of these nanoparticles by UV-Visible spectroscopy and TEM. We then describe the effect of the concentrations and of various type of the stabilizer, and the post-synthesis treatment on gold nanoparticles size. In Chapter 4, we focus on determining the nature of the interactions at molecular level between citrate (and other carboxylate-containing ligands) and AuNP in terms of the mode of coordination at the surface, and the formal oxidation state of Au when interacting with these negatively charged carboxylate ligands (i.e., LX- in the Green formalism). We achieve this by combining very advanced 13C CP/MAS, 23Na MAS and low-temperature SSNMR, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. A particular emphasis will be based on SS-NMR. In Chapter 5, we study the influence of pretreatment of 1% Au/TiO2 catalysts on the resulting activity in the oxidation of carbon monoxide, the effect of the concentration and the type of the ligands on the catalytic activity. The catalysts were characterized by TPO, XRD, and TEM spectroscopy.