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Popular education, participatory democracy and social change : The Renton : a case studyScanlon, Thaddeus January 2014 (has links)
Through history popular education has evolved against the backdrop of social movements engaged in the struggle for social change in a variety of contexts. During the past forty years some of these movements have found expression in a wide range of participatory processes with a particular focus on community empowerment. In 1993, in the village of Renton, Scotland, local people created their own housing association, Cordale Housing Association (CHA) and from its inception declared that it would not build houses “for people to live their poverty in” (CHA Mission statement, 1993). Since then the community has acquired local physical assets and created the Renton Community Development Trust (RCDT) focused on eradicating poverty in the village. Based on data collected in the period 2009 – 2011, I examine the community’s claim to social change in the village over the past twenty years. I also discuss the community’s claim to local peoples’ active participation in the process of social change and whether the Renton community experience can be considered a process of popular education. This research is a contribution to the body of knowledge identified with critical social-educational research. It is also a contribution to the debate about the creation of a new socio-economic and cultural model of society based on the values of equity, solidarity and justice.
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Effectiveness of agricultural extension organisation in rural areas: the case of Amathole District Municipality (Eastern Cape)Makapela, Mzuhleli 07 1900 (has links)
The study was prompted by the escalating levels of poverty in Amathole District Municipality of the Eastern Cape Province despite the poverty alleviation programmes that have been established since 1994. The main objective of this study was to identify the underlying factors and challenges that affected agricultural extension organisations in the Amathole District Municipality and explore the role and the prospects of extension organisations as a strategy for development and growth in the district municipality. Data was collected through interviews and with the use of structured questionnaires. The questionnaires were administered to 300 farmers and 20 extension practitioners that had been selected by the systematic random sampling technique in the Amathole District Municipality. After data collection, questionnaires were coded, captured and analysed using MS Excel (2010) and SPSS version 22 (2014). Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data. Results indicated that although extension officers indicated that they had a positive relationship with the communities they services, farmers indicated that extension policies did not favour them. Conclusions were therefore drawn that agricultural extension organisation was not effective in accelerating development in the Amathole District Municipality. The study, therefore, recommended that further research focusing on the impact of extension services on the economy of South Africa be conducted / Agriculture, Animal Health and Human Ecology / M. Sc. (Agriculture)
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EXTENDING THE RANGE OF PCM/FM USING A MULTISYMBOL DETECTOR AND TURBO CODINGGeoghegan, Mark 10 1900 (has links)
International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / It has been shown that a multi-symbol detector can improve the detection efficiency of PCM/FM by 3 dB when compared to traditional methods without any change to the transmitted waveform. Although this is a significant breakthrough, further improvements are possible with the addition of Forward Error Correction (FEC). Systematic redundancy can be added by encoding the source data prior to the modulation process, thereby allowing channel errors to be corrected using a decoding circuit. Better detection efficiency translates into additional link margin that can be used to extend the operating range, support higher data throughput, or significantly improve the quality of the received data. This paper investigates the detection efficiency that can be achieved using a multisymbol detector and turbo product coding. The results show that this combination can improve the detection performance by nearly 9 dB relative to conventional PCM/FM systems. The increase in link margin is gained at the expense of a small increase in bandwidth and the additional complexity of the encoding and decoding circuitry.
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Learning through a Foundation DegreeTaylor, Claire January 2009 (has links)
This research explores the learning experiences of three mature students studying for a Foundation Degree – a two-year qualification, introduced in England and Wales in 2001, that uniquely spans the academic-vocational nexus within higher education. Data collected through interviews and journal entries were used to construct accounts of each of the students’ learning experiences, forming a longitudinal case study that spanned two years. This material is used in three ways to give insight into learning through a Foundation Degree. Firstly, the accounts stand by themselves as detailed descriptions of what it is like to learn through a Foundation Degree. Secondly, the accounts illustrate ways in which particular learning theories and models are helpful to understanding the students’ learning experiences, and also the areas in which some theories and models fall short. Thirdly, a new conceptual model has been developed which identifies six factors that significantly impact upon the Foundation Degree learner’s experience. Each of these factors has the potential to influence learning positively or negatively, depending on where it lies upon a continuum that polarises learning inhibitors and enablers. This model is used to scrutinise Foundation Degree teaching and learning practice, using the accounts as reference points, and more effective approaches to Foundation Degree delivery have been suggested.
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On the Einstein-Vlasov systemFjällborg, Mikael January 2006 (has links)
<p>In this thesis we consider the Einstein-Vlasov system, which models a system of particles within the framework of general relativity, and where collisions between the particles are assumed to be sufficiently rare to be neglected. Here the particles are stars, galaxies or even clusters of galaxies, which interact by the gravitational field generated collectively by the particles.</p><p>The thesis consists of three papers, and the first two are devoted to cylindrically symmetric spacetimes and the third treats the spherically symmetric case.</p><p>In the first paper the time-dependent Einstein-Vlasov system with cylindrical symmetry is considered. We prove global existence in the so called polarized case under the assumption that the particles never reach a neighborhood of the axis of symmetry. In the more general case of a non-polarized metric we need the additional assumption that the derivatives of certain metric components are bounded in a vicinity of the axis of symmetry to obtain global existence.</p><p>The second paper of the thesis considers static cylindrical spacetimes. In this case we prove global existence in space and also that the solutions have finite extension in two of the three spatial dimensions. It then follows that it is possible to extend the spacetime by gluing it with a Levi-Civita spacetime, i.e. the most general vacuum solution of the static cylindrically symmetric Einstein equations.</p><p>In the third and last paper, which is a joint work with C. Uggla and M. Heinzle, the static spherically symmetric Einstein-Vlasov system is studied. We introduce a new method by rewriting the system as an autonomous dynamical system on a state space with compact closure. In this way we are able to improve earlier results and enlarge the class of distribution functions which give rise to steady states with finite mass and finite extension.</p>
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colorXtractor - a technical aid for people with colour blindnessHochwarter, Stefan January 2010 (has links)
<p>The aim of this thesis is to develop an technical aid (software) to help people with colourblindness. Colour blind people have difficulties to differentiate between certain colours,so the implemented software will name a selected colour. The software is implementedas a Mozilla Firefox extension and also uses a XPCOM component. Furthermore canthe user select different colour databases and change the displaying properties.The aim of this thesis is to develop an technical aid (software) to help people with colourblindness. Colour blind people have difficulties to differentiate between certain colours,so the implemented software will name a selected colour. The software is implementedas a Mozilla Firefox extension and also uses a XPCOM component. Furthermore canthe user select different colour databases and change the displaying properties.</p>
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Customising compilers for customisable processorsMurray, Alastair Colin January 2012 (has links)
The automatic generation of instruction set extensions to provide application-specific acceleration for embedded processors has been a productive area of research in recent years. There have been incremental improvements in the quality of the algorithms that discover and select which instructions to add to a processor. The use of automatic algorithms, however, result in instructions which are radically different from those found in conventional, human-designed, RISC or CISC ISAs. This has resulted in a gap between the hardware’s capabilities and the compiler’s ability to exploit them. This thesis proposes and investigates the use of a high-level compiler pass that uses graph-subgraph isomorphism checking to exploit these complex instructions. Operating in a separate pass permits techniques to be applied that are uniquely suited for mapping complex instructions, but unsuitable for conventional instruction selection. The existing, mature, compiler back-end can then handle the remainder of the compilation. With this method, the high-level pass was able to use 1965 different automatically produced instructions to obtain an initial average speed-up of 1.11x over 179 benchmarks evaluated on a hardware-verified cycle-accurate simulator. This result was improved following an investigation of how the produced instructions were being used by the compiler. It was established that the models the automatic tools were using to develop instructions did not take account of how well the compiler could realistically use them. Adding additional parameters to the search heuristic to account for compiler issues increased the speed-up from 1.11x to 1.24x. An alternative approach using a re-designed hardware interface was also investigated and this achieved a speed-up of 1.26x while reducing hardware and compiler complexity. A complementary, high-level, method of exploiting dual memory banks was created to increase memory bandwidth to accommodate the increased data-processing bandwidth provided by extension instructions. Finally, the compiler was considered for use in a non-conventional role where rather than generating code it is used to apply source-level transformations prior to the generation of extension instructions and thus affect the shape of the instructions that are generated.
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The Colorado River Indian Tribes (C.R.I.T.) Reservation and Extension ProgramsTuttle, Sabrina, Masters, Linda 10 1900 (has links)
6 pp. / This fact sheet describes the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of the CRIT reservation, as well as the history of extension and effective extension programs and collaborations conducted on this reservation.
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The Effect of Sleep Extension on Academic Performance, Cognitive Functioning and Psychological Distress in AdolescentsHasler, Jennifer Cousins January 2008 (has links)
Previous research has shown that insufficient sleep at night and daytime sleepiness contributes to psychological distress, cognitive deficiencies and poor academic performance. The current study examines the effect of nighttime sleep extension on sleep, psychological health, academic performance and cognitive functioning in a sample of adolescents with complaints of daytime sleepiness and insufficient nighttime sleep.Participants were 56 adolescents (34 females) aged 14 - 18 (Mean age = 16.46). Participants were given daily sleep diaries and actiwatch during an initial interview. Sleepiness, psychological, academic and cognitive assessments were completed after one week of sleep data collection. The participants were randomly assigned to either extend their sleep for at least 60 minutes on three consecutive school nights or continue with their normal sleep schedule. After the sleep extension the same battery of tasks were completed. Baseline and post-intervention sleep, psychological, academic and cognitive data included daily sleep diaries, the Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS), State Trait Anxiety Scale - Short (STAI-S), AIMS reading comprehension and mathematic questions, digit span, verbal fluency, trail making and go/no go inhibition.Nineteen of those assigned to extend their sleep succeeded (M = 80.35 min.). Repeated measures ANOVAs were performed on sleep, psychological well being, academics and cognitive assessments to evaluate the sleep extension intervention. Interactions for the sleep variables found that Sleep Extenders decreased difficulty in waking in the morning and daytime sleepiness, increased time in bed, total sleep time and sleep efficiency more than Non-Sleep Extenders, (all p < .05). No differences were found for the STAI-S or the academic questions. All participants improved on the forward digit span (p < .05); however, t-tests showed that only the Sleep Extenders improved on the backward digit span (p < .05). All participants performed worse on the verbal fluency task, (p < .01). Everyone improved on trail making part A (p < .01), however, only Sleep Extenders improved on trail making part B, (p < .01).Even small increases in the duration of nighttime sleep can improve sleep variables, reduce daytime sleepiness, and produce improvement on measures of cognitive ability requiring mental control and flexibility in adolescents.
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Thermochronology of Early Jurassic Exhumation of the Yukon-Tanana Terrane, West-central YukonKnight, Eleanor 28 June 2012 (has links)
This study utilised U-Pb geochronology, and 40Ar/39Ar and (U-Th)/He thermochro-nology to delineate arc magmatism, metamorphism, and exhumation of the pericratonic Yukon-Tanana terrane in the McQuesten map area of west-central Yukon, Canada. SHRIMP U-Pb ages delineate Mid to Late Paleozoic arc magmatism and fit key units into the regional lithotectonic framework of the terrane. The juxtaposition of unmetamorphosed and predomi-nantly undeformed Devono-Mississippian rocks in the northwest of the study area with polydeformed and up to amphibolite facies metamorphosed rocks in the southwest suggests a crustal-scale discontinuity, the Willow Lake fault, bounds the two domains. The asymmetric distribution of 40Ar/39Ar ages across the fault suggest it is extensional, and was active in the Early Jurassic. Zircon (U-Th)/He ages delineate erosion of rocks in the northwest through the upper crust during the Late Triassic and Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous followed by Mid-dle Cretaceous erosion of the southwestern domain and possibly fault reactivation.
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