Essay I explores brain machine interface (BMI) technologies. These make direct communication between the brain and a machine possible by means of electrical stimuli. This essay reviews the existing and emerging technologies in this field and offers a systematic inquiry into the relevant ethical problems that are likely to emerge in the following decades. Essay II, co-written with professor Sven-Ove Hansson, presents a novel procedure to engage the public in ethical deliberations on the potential impacts of brain machine interface technology. We call this procedure a Convergence seminar, a form of scenario-based group discussion that is founded on the idea of hypothetical retrospection. The theoretical background of this procedure and the results of the five seminars are presented here. Essay III discusses moral enhancement, an instance of human enhancement that alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behavior in order to make that person more moral. Moral enhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy is behavioral enhancement. The second strategy, favored by prominent defenders of moral enhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. / <p>QC 20121206</p>

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Yes / In this chapter we will review experimental evidence related to pharmacological moral enhancement. Firstly, we will present our recent study in which we found that a drug called propranolol could change moral judgements. Further research, which also investigated this, found similar results. Secondly, we will discuss the limitations of such approaches, when it comes to the idea of general “human enhancement”. Whilst promising effects on certain moral concepts might be beneficial to the development of theoretical moral psychology, enhancement of human moral behaviour in general – to our current understanding – has more side-effects than intended effects, making it potentially harmful. We give an overview of misconceptions when taking experimental findings beyond the laboratory and discuss the problems and solutions associated with the psychological assessment of moral behaviour. Indeed, how is morality “measured” in psychology, and are those measures reliable?

A submerged-media biological aerated filter (BAF) has been studied to 1) evaluate oxygen transfer kinetics under conditions without biological growth and 2) determine the influence of biological growth on the rate of oxygen transfer. Collectively, the study evaluates the rates of supply and consumption of oxygen in BAFs. The mass-transfer characteristics of a submerged-media BAF were initially determined over a wide range of gas and liquid flow rates without the presence of bacteria. The mass-transfer coefficients (KLa(T)) were measured using a nitrogen gas stripping method and were found to increase as both gas and liquid superficial velocities increase, with values ranging from approximately 40 to 380 h??. The effect of parameters including the gas and liquid velocities, dirty water to clean water ratio, and temperature dependence was successfully correlated within +/- 20% of the experimental KLa value. The effects of the media size and gas holdup fractions were also investigated. Stagnant gas holdup did not significantly influence the rate of oxygen transfer. Dynamic gas holdup and the difference between total and stagnant gas holdup were found to increase with an increase in gas velocity. Neither liquid velocity nor liquid temperature was determined to have a significant impact on gas holdup. A tertiary nitrification BAF pilot unit was then operated for 5 months downstream of a secondary treatment unit at a domestic wastewater treatment facility. The study investigated the oxygen transfer capabilities of the nitrifying unit with high oxygen demand requirements through a series of aeration process tests and explored the presence of oxygen transfer enhancements by further analyzing the actual transfer mechanism limitations. It was determined that (assuming OTE equals 20 percent) aerating the BAF pilot unit based on the stoichiometric aeration demand resulted in overaeration of the unit, especially at lower pollutant loading rates. Endogenous respiration contributed to only 2 to 7 percent of the total oxygen demand with regions of biomass activity changing with varying loading conditions. An enhanced oxygen transfer factor was determined in the biologically active pilot. Although it cannot be definitively concluded that the observed oxygen transfer factor is either due to biological activity or not simply an artifact of measurement/analysis techniques, the enhancement factor can be mathematically accounted for by either an increase in the KLa factor or the associated driving force using a proposed enhanced bubble theory. / Master of Science

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Master of Music / Department of Music / Julie Yu / John Dewey once said, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” I believe this to be true even in the choral classroom. This paper discusses my philosophy of music education along with ways to incorporate technology into a choral music classroom through the use of web-based resources. As with any educational discipline, technology must be used in the right context to be the most effective. It must be filled with activities, instruction, and guided practice that can pass through the filter of your own philosophy of education and disseminated throughout the Nation Standards in Arts Education.

In the postmodern-day organisation, acknowledgement of the facts today is that the retail sector has changed dramatically over the past ten years. Boom periods, surplus shopping and good times have ended. We have entered an era of harsh changes, business collapse, mergers, acquisitions and turbulent competitive environments that demand a constant review of business structure, financial performance, business practices and value creation to provide any hope of the ability to trade sustainably into the future. Responsiveness by retailers in this modern day driven by market need changes causes an almost instantaneous response by retailers to adapt and service the consumer demand. Thus, in evaluation of the underlying reasons for retail market shifts, one starting with the basic premise and rule of the law of natural selection – adapt to the environment, or die. No doubt that customer demand and the competitive landscape dictate effective and quick response from retailers, driving the form, shape, volume and nature of change. Present day marketplace forces are generally forming a worldwide consumer marketplace that will appear dramatically different since 2010, pushing retailers to bring about fundamental improvements to their methods and business models in order to survive. Conventional campaigns will stop being sufficient to deal with trends which may drive the retail markets into the realm of extreme conditions. Retailers in South Africa, albeit not directly, are impacted by global shifts and changes. In an environment with increasing competition and the growing demands for operational efficiencies, sustained profits and customer orientation, SA retailers are looking beyond their traditional business models and organisational boundaries to develop and leverage the resources and capabilities of international best practice to create superior value and drive competitive advantages in the marketplace. Value-add in making things work better for customers, albeit through various business enhancement and improvement initiatives, the longer their relationship will endure with the company. Thus the potential of adopting a deliberate creativity approach within the broader strategic planning process of a company, might well be the value-add activity that provides the catalyst for closing the performance gap, through bridging and integrating the core concepts of creativity and applying these concepts within real business operations, with the explicit aim of improving business profitability. To this end, the study originated from a need for a creativity-driven approach to enhance business performance in a retail organisation and not only challenge current paradigms, but redefine furniture retailing and create new furniture retailing operating models. In so doing, using a deliberate creativity-driven approach, that will catapult furniture retail onto a new performance curve that ultimately creates shareholder value through an enhanced customer proposition. The researcher embarked on a journey to establish whether a structured deliberate creativity change management framework could improve a company’s competitiveness, effectiveness and profitability; and to what degree a creativity framework can be used to enhance performance within a company. The research study results and findings, together with the financial performance results revealed that the creativity interventions deployed did in fact enhance business performance (financial, cultural, productivity and organisational behaviour) over the specific study period. The study also includes the design of a Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Framework, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Strategy, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Implementation Plan and an Integrated Beyonder Scorecard, which can be applied to any type of retail business across numerous diverse disciplines. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

In the postmodern-day organisation, acknowledgement of the facts today is that the retail sector has changed dramatically over the past ten years. Boom periods, surplus shopping and good times have ended. We have entered an era of harsh changes, business collapse, mergers, acquisitions and turbulent competitive environments that demand a constant review of business structure, financial performance, business practices and value creation to provide any hope of the ability to trade sustainably into the future. Responsiveness by retailers in this modern day driven by market need changes causes an almost instantaneous response by retailers to adapt and service the consumer demand. Thus, in evaluation of the underlying reasons for retail market shifts, one starting with the basic premise and rule of the law of natural selection – adapt to the environment, or die. No doubt that customer demand and the competitive landscape dictate effective and quick response from retailers, driving the form, shape, volume and nature of change. Present day marketplace forces are generally forming a worldwide consumer marketplace that will appear dramatically different since 2010, pushing retailers to bring about fundamental improvements to their methods and business models in order to survive. Conventional campaigns will stop being sufficient to deal with trends which may drive the retail markets into the realm of extreme conditions. Retailers in South Africa, albeit not directly, are impacted by global shifts and changes. In an environment with increasing competition and the growing demands for operational efficiencies, sustained profits and customer orientation, SA retailers are looking beyond their traditional business models and organisational boundaries to develop and leverage the resources and capabilities of international best practice to create superior value and drive competitive advantages in the marketplace. Value-add in making things work better for customers, albeit through various business enhancement and improvement initiatives, the longer their relationship will endure with the company. Thus the potential of adopting a deliberate creativity approach within the broader strategic planning process of a company, might well be the value-add activity that provides the catalyst for closing the performance gap, through bridging and integrating the core concepts of creativity and applying these concepts within real business operations, with the explicit aim of improving business profitability. To this end, the study originated from a need for a creativity-driven approach to enhance business performance in a retail organisation and not only challenge current paradigms, but redefine furniture retailing and create new furniture retailing operating models. In so doing, using a deliberate creativity-driven approach, that will catapult furniture retail onto a new performance curve that ultimately creates shareholder value through an enhanced customer proposition. The researcher embarked on a journey to establish whether a structured deliberate creativity change management framework could improve a company’s competitiveness, effectiveness and profitability; and to what degree a creativity framework can be used to enhance performance within a company. The research study results and findings, together with the financial performance results revealed that the creativity interventions deployed did in fact enhance business performance (financial, cultural, productivity and organisational behaviour) over the specific study period. The study also includes the design of a Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Framework, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Strategy, Conceptual Deliberate Creativity Implementation Plan and an Integrated Beyonder Scorecard, which can be applied to any type of retail business across numerous diverse disciplines. / PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014