This thesis examines if auditors, managers and workers see certification and auditing as tools to improve working conditions in the Kenyan cut flower industry. It scrutinizes if mentioned stakeholders think that certification has been effective, since the state of working conditions of the industry were brought to attention in 2002 by academics and non-governmental organizations. The study further examines what different stakeholders see as challenges with the certification process as well as with the auditing process. The theoretical framework for the study consists of several theories from previous studies, including Gereffi’s buyer-driven value chain and Barrientos and Smith’s distinction between outcome standards and process rights. The study is partly a literature review but focus of the study is on the findings from ten semi-structured interviews. Among the stakeholder groups there was not one commonly expressed understanding on if certification and auditing had improved the working conditions. All three stakeholders emphasized some positive changes because of certification although they saw remaining challenges with for example freedom of association and increasing the level of wages to becoming living wages. The main findings in the study support Barrientos and Smith’s distinction and certification and auditing are argued not to be effective tools alone to reach improvements in the industry.

The purposes of this study are to investigate the customers¡¦ perception of the service quality and their continuative consuming behavior of leisure floral farms after their visit two farms of Taiwan Sugar Corporation. Based on the results of this study, suggestions are offered to managers of leisure floral farms. Survey research was conducted for this study. The subjects included 640 visitors from each area in two farms of Taiwan Sugar Corporation. And 498 acceptable questionnaire were collected. The acceptance rate was 80.76%. The questionnaire includes service quality volume and behavior intention volume proposed by PZB. The data are analyzed include analysis of association between background items and consumer experience items, t-test , one-way ANOVA, and stepwise multiple regression. The conclusions of this study are as follows: 1. There is positive correlation between service quality, royalty and pay-more intention, and irrelevancy to switch intention. 2. There is correlation between customer demand and floral information, price. 3. Most consumers who visit leisure floral farms are interested in flowers and plants. It indicates that leisure floral farms with potentiality to assimilate visitors into customers, particularly for diversified farms.

Abstract This text, referred to the manpower survey data in 1991 & 2003 obtained from the Accounting & Statistics Department, is aimed at making a study of the trend on the switch of occupation before and after the rise of the Knowledge-based Economy Age. The employees, having experiences of switch, are chosen from the data of the Accounting & Statistic Department for ongoing intersecting analysis of before and after their switch. This research has found that the turnover of occupation/profession, within the time before development of the knowledge-based economy Age of 1991, has been prone to the mass-labor industries, such as traditional manufacture, construction and etc. Amid those labor mobility, industries which having failing net turnover rate of 2003, include the ones of ¡§Professional, Scientific and Technical services¡¨ and ¡§Cultural, Sporting and Recreational Services.¡¨ It shows that Taiwan is appropriate to a new market with reconstructed labor and reacts clearly in that the supply of employees were not quick enough to catch reshuffled employment market. Possessing the first and second place among those industries are that ¡§Technicians and related¡¨ and ¡§Machine Operators & Fabricator¡¨ that are failing on the net turnover rate, are well in parallel with two industries of ¡§Construction¡¨ & ¡§Real Estate and Rental and Leasing ¡§ that are keeping minus on the net turnover rate. Furthermore, it shows that the traditional mass-labor industries have entailed labor to flow outward massively. The labor released from swift labor restructure is the major reason what causing the massive number of unemployment in the labor market. In the past twelve years, the structure of occupation of Taiwan¡¦s employees is changed from mass-labor to mass-technique, and developed toward the service-industry steadily. The dominant phenomenon existing together in current labor market are that both unemployment and insufficiency of labor.

Flow disruption resulting from interactions between currents and abrupt topography can have important consequences for biological processes in the ocean. A highresolution three-dimensional hydrodynamic model is used to study topographically influenced flow at the Flower Garden Banks, two small but thriving coral reef ecosystems in the northwest Gulf of Mexico. Flow past the modeled banks is characterized by vortex shedding, turbulent wake formation and strong return velocities in the near-wake regions. The speed of the oncoming current, strength of water-column stratification, and level of topographic detail used in the model each serve to modulate these basic flow characteristics. Larval retention and dispersal processes at the Flower Garden Banks, and specifically the dependence of these processes on the nature of flow disruption, are explored by coupling a Lagrangian particle-tracking algorithm to the hydrodynamic model. Passive particles released from the tops of the modeled banks as mimics of coral larvae can remain trapped in the wake regions very close to the banks on time scales of hours to days, depending primarily on the speed of the free-stream current. Most particles are swept quickly downstream, however, where their trajectories are most strongly influenced by the topography of the continental shelf. Modeled dispersal patterns suggest that there is an ample supply of larvae from the Flower Garden Banks to nearby oil and gas platforms, which can provide suitable benthic habitat for corals. The flow disturbances generated by the modeled banks result in the mixing of nutrients from deeper water into shallower, nutrient-depleted layers in the wakes of the banks. The ability of the planktonic system to respond to such an injection of nutrients is tested by embedding a simple nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton ecosystem model into the hydrodynamic model. Plankton biomass in the flow-disturbed wakes is shown to increase in response to the additional nutrients. This study shows how flow-topography interactions at the Flower Garden Banks can exert critical control over local larval transport processes and plankton dynamics. More generally, it demonstrates the usefulness and feasibility of using numerical models as tools to uncover important mechanisms of physical-biological interaction in the ocean.

Many commercially grown apple cultivars have a biennial cropping habit, producing many small fruit in one year and few or none in the following year. The production of fruits is known to inhibit flower initiation for the following year. This undesirable trait is frequently managed by removing (thinning) some flowers or young fruit in years of heavy flowering which improves the size of remaining fruits, but does not reliably improve flowering in the following year. The effect of thinning on flower initiation is not well understood. Two mathematical models are developed describing the relationship between flowering in one year and the next. The first models the effects of thinning on return bloom and attempts to define maximum repeatable flower number. The second models how proximity of growing points may impact biennial bearing and maximum annual flower number. This second model may be useful to advance research into biennial bearing in apple.

This research investigated seasonal climate changes within greenhouses and the impacts they have on efficacy of the predatory mites Amblyseius swirskii and Neoseiulus cucumeris. Controlled environment chamber, greenhouse small-cage, and commercial greenhouse trials were conducted to determine which biological control agent is more efficacious for control of the pest western flower thrips (WFT), (Frankliniella occidentalis) on ornamental crops. When observed under laboratory conditions, predation and oviposition were increased at higher temperatures. Photoperiod and light intensity also have an impact on predatory mites. Predation rates for both mite species were greater when subjected to short day light conditions (8 h light, 11 W/m2). Climates typical of summer (higher temperature and light intensity, long day length), were most favourable in terms of predation and oviposition for A. swirskii. Neoseiulus cucumeris laid more eggs under short day as opposed to long day settings. In summer and winter greenhouse small cage trials, the performance of N. cucumeris and A. swirskii significantly reduced WFT numbers on potted chrysanthemum plants. However, in summer, A. swirskii provided significantly better thrips control than N. cucumeris. The number of adult mites recovered from plants was similar for both mite treatments in winter, while A. swirskii were present in higher numbers throughout the summer trials. Results from leaf damage assessments indicate that A. swirskii is more effective for control of heavy WFT feeding damage in both summer and winter. Results from commercial greenhouse trials yielded similar trends as those found in the summer and winter small cage trials. / University of Guelph, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Vineland Research and Innovation Center, Flowers Canada

<p>This mini-thesis is concerned with histories of flower selling in Cape Town. Since the late 19th century, images and imaginings of the flower sellers in Adderley Street and to a lesser degree in other areas of the city attained an outstanding place in visualisations and descriptions of Cape Town. The flower sellers were thereby characterised in a particularly gendered, racialised and class-specific way as predominantly female, coloured and poor. This characterisation dominated to an extent that it is possible to speak of a discursive figure of the ̕̕Cape Town flower sellers̕̕. In tourism-related media and in personal memoirs, the ̕̕Cape Town flower sellers̕̕ often came to represent both the city and the inhabitants of Cape Town. The images and imaginings of the &lsquo / Cape Town flower sellers&rsquo / can partly be traced back to representations of ̓̓̕̕flower girls̕̕ in fictional stories, paintings, photographs and film in Europe, particularly in Great Britain. In Cape Town, this European discourse about flower selling developed in a specific way within colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid contexts.</p>

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1995. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-118).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1995. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-118).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1995. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-118).