In an effort to obtain 100-year level hurricane protection for southeastern Louisiana, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has implemented design guidelines that both levees and structures shall be designed to. Historically, USACE has used concrete piles or steel H-piles as the foundations for these structures. Because of the magnitude of obtaining 100-year level hurricane protection, limited resources, and a condensed timeline, spiral welded pipe piles can be manufactured as an alternative to either the concrete piles or steel H-piles. This research will provide the necessary background for understanding pile foundations, will compare the behaviors of spiral welded pipe piles to that of other piles with respect to geotechnical concerns through a series of pile load tests, and will offer a current cost analysis. This background, testing, and cost analysis will show that spiral welded pipe piles are a viable alternative for USACE structures from a geotechnical and economic perspective.

The present dissertation is a comparative investigation between the Germanic-like structural phenomena found in the left periphery of Old French (OF) clauses and the syntactic phenomena found in the left periphery of Old High German (OHG). The goal of this thesis is to provide evidence that only a synchronic analysis can explain the presence of Germanic-like structures in OF syntax. The reason for this lies in the similarities between the V2 properties found in OF and OHG. The two languages show V2 properties such as V-to-C movement and XP fronting, but also properties which are not found in Modern V2 languages such as a frequent V1 and V3 word order. The corpus I use consists of four OF texts from the 12th and 13th century which correspond to the late OF period. They are composed in different OF dialects from the northern part of France. The poetic texts chosen for this study are Le voyage de Saint-Brandan and Gormont et Isembart. The prose texts are Le Roman de Tristan en prose and Les Miracles de Saint Louis. I coded these OF documents according to certain criteria: main clause type, embedded clause type, finite verb position, first element preceding the finite verb, etc. The results indicate that OF can be considered a true V2-language that shares a certain amount of properties with OHG, namely V-to-C movement, XP fronting, Stylistic Fronting as well as verb-initial clauses. This thesis illustrates that the OF dialects closer situated to the Germanic language border show a higher frequency in Germanic-like syntactic phenomena than the dialects situated further away. A difference between poems and prose texts concerning the presence and intensity of certain syntactic phenomena can also be observed.

Designingenjörsstudenterna Kajsa Phalén och Emelie Lövgren Berg på Högskolan i Skövde har under våren 2016 arbetat med ett produktutvecklingsprojekt i samverkan med leksaksföretaget Strawbees. Företaget vill börja sälja sina kreativa leksaker i butik och vill därför utveckla ett säljande displayställ som ska bära produkterna. En grundläggande förstudie har gjorts för att definiera en målgrupp som består av kunder och andra intressenter. Förstudien täcker också marknadsförings-strategier i butik och undersökningar som gjorts för att öka förståelsen för målgruppens behov. Marknadsanalyser över konkurrenter gav inspiration från redan befintliga lösningar på problemet och kollage över färgkoder och formspråk gav resultatet den känsla som företaget vill förmedla. Antalet produkter displaystället skulle bära hade stort fokus för starten av konceptgenereringen och kombinationer av hur produkterna kan placeras lade grunden för displayställets utformning. Genom analyser kring hur konkurrenter löst visuell design för displayställ skapades visuella teman. De framtagna utformningarna ihop med visuella teman och den känsla som företaget vill förmedla skapade sedan olika koncept. De vidareutvecklade koncepten analyserades efter hur de passade in i dess rätta miljö, en leksaksbutik. Utefter upptäckta brister kunde antalet koncept begränsas till enbart två stycken som senare blev prototyper. Dessa prototyper testades i verklig storlek ihop med de produkter som displaystället skulle rymma. Ett koncept kunde därefter bestämmas och vidareutvecklas i detaljform för att på bästa sätt nå upp till krav och önskemål. / During spring 2016, the engineering students Kajsa Phalén and Emelie Lövgren Berg, at the University of Skövde, developed a product in cooperation with the toy company Strawbees. The company wants to sell their creative toys in stores and therefore wants to develop a sales display stand that will carry the products. A basic feasibility study has been done to define a target group of customers and other stakeholders. The feasibility study also covers marketing strategies in shops and studies were carried out to increase understanding of the target group needs. Market analysis of competitors gave inspiration from existing solutions of the problem and a collage over color codes and idioms gave the result the feeling that the company wants to convey. The number of products that the display stand would wear was a major focus in the beginning of the concept generation. Combinations of how the products can be placed laid the foundation for the design of the display stand. Through analysis of how competitors solved the visual design for the display stand some visual themes were created. The developed designs together with visual themes and the feeling that the company wants to convey created various concepts. The new concepts were analyzed for how they would fit into its natural environment, a toy store. Because of some shortcomings the number of concept could be limited to only two, who later became prototypes. These prototypes were tested in real size together with the products that the display stand would accommodate. A concept could then be determined and developed in detail as to the best way to reach up to the demands and wishes of the company.

The vowel systems of five selected Iranian Balochi dialects are investigated in this study, which is the first work to apply empirical acoustic analysis to a large body of recorded data on the vowel inventories of different Balochi dialects spoken in Iran. The selected dialects are spoken in the five regions of Sistan (SI), Saravan (SA), Khash (KH), Iranshahr (IR), and Chabahar (CH) located in the province Sistan and Baluchestan in southeast Iran. The aim of the present fieldwork-based survey is to study how similar the vowel systems of these dialects are to the Common Balochi vowel system (i, iː, u, uː, a, aː, eː, oː), which is represented as the vowel inventory for the Balochi dialects in general, as well as how similar these dialects are to one another.  The investigation shows that length is contrastive in these dialects, although the durational dif-ferences between the long and short counterparts are quite small in some dialects. The study also reveals that there are some differences between the vowel systems of these dialects and the Com-mon Balochi sound inventory. The Common Balochi short /i/ vowel is modified to short /e/ in these dialects, and a strong tendency for the long /eː/ and /oː/ to become the diphthongs ie and ue, respec-tively, is observed in some of the investigated dialects, specifically in KH, which shows heavier diphthongization than the other dialects. It is also observed, especially in SI, SA, and CH, that the short /u/ shows strong tendencies to shift towards a lower position of an [o] vowel. In SI and SA, this shift seems to be a correlate of syllable structure, with lowering occurring mostly in closed syllables. It is possible that Persian, as the dominant language in the area, has had an influence on these dialects and caused a lowering tendency among the higher vowels.  The vowel systems in these dialects differ slightly from each other. Phonemically, the pairs e/eː, a/aː, u/uː, and the long vowels /iː/ and /oː/ are suggested for IR; the pairs a/aː, u/uː, the short /e/ and the long /iː/ as well as the diphthongs /ie/ and /ue/ substituted for the long /eː/ and /oː/, respectively, are suggested for KH; and finally the pairs e/eː, a/aː, o/oː, and the long vowels /iː/ and /uː/, which make a more symmetrical inventory, are suggested for the SI, SA, and CH dialects. In general, the vowels in these dialects show a range of phonetic variations. In addition, processes of fronting, which is most common in coronal contexts, and nasalization, which mostly occurs in nasal envi-ronments, are observed in the data researched.

Though previous research has documented the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) in Alabama and Tennessee, none has focused on Mississippi. Also, the majority of research has focused on European-Americans. In this study, data was collected from women from northern and central Mississippi, with central residents evenly recruited from urban and rural areas. Of these, 15 were European-American and 19 were African-American. Participants read a word list including target vowels in the b_d frame. F1, F2, and vector length were analyzed to determine to what extent participants exhibited the SVS and Back Vowel Fronting. For the SVS, there were effects such that central residents shifted more than northern, rural residents shifted more than urban, and African-American residents shifted more than European-American. European-American women fronted /u/ and /o/ more than African-American women. These results suggest that African-American women from Mississippi do participate in the SVS but are not fronting their back vowels.

This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of wh-question formation in Jordanian Arabic (JA) and presents a uniform approach that can accommodate all of its various wh-constructions. JA makes use of five different wh-constructions, four of which involve clause-initial wh-phrases and the fifth is a typical in-situ wh-construction. Although wh-phrases surface clause-initially in four different wh-constructions in JA, I propose that bona fide wh-movement to [Spec, CP] does not occur in any of these constructions, whether overtly in syntax or covertly at LF. I abandon the classification of JA as a wh-movement language (Abdel Razaq 2011) and focus instead on identifying the syntactic role that wh-phrases realize and the underlying structures that feed each wh-construction. I propose that the clause-initial position of the wh-phrase results either from the syntactic function that the wh-phrase serves or from other syntactic operations that are independently attested in JA. There are three clause-initial positions that the wh-phrase can occupy: it surfaces in [Spec, TP] when functioning as the subject of a verbal or verbless structure, in [Spec, TopP] when functioning as a clitic-left-dislocated element (as in CLLD questions and ʔilli-interrogatives involving PRON), or in [Spec, FocP] when undergoing focus fronting. Thus, all instances of clause-initial wh-phrases in JA constitute what I refer to as “pseudo wh-fronting”, as the clause-initial position of the wh-phrase arises from mechanisms other than canonical wh-movement to [Spec, CP]. To account for the interpretation of wh-phrases in JA, I adopt a binding approach in which a null interrogative morpheme (Baker 1970; Pesetsky 1987; Chomsky 1995) unselectively binds the wh-phrase regardless of its surface position, whether clause-initial or clause-internal (in-situ). A major implication of this analysis is that JA is a concealed wh-in-situ language of the Chinese type although it looks at a cursory glance as though it were a wh-movement language of the English type. A broader typological implication of my analysis is the convergence of Cheng’s (1991) Clausal Typing Hypothesis to which JA previously appeared to constitute a counterexample. The recognition of the null interrogative particle, or its optional overt realization as the Q-particle huwweh, as the locus of interrogative clause typing in all JA wh-questions entails that JA employs just one unique strategy to type a clause as a wh-question, as predicted by Cheng’s Clausal Typing Hypothesis, regardless of whether the wh-phrase surfaces clause-initially or clause-internally. / February 2017

Kilkonstruktionen, dvs. framflyttningen av ett satsled till en position före det finita verbet i en sats utan synligt subjekt, har i tidigare forskning visats bestämmas av en särskild hierarki, en kilhierarki, som styr valet av kil. Inom generativ grammatik har denna kilhierarki förklarats av en allmän syntaktisk regel i stil med Chomskys (1995) Minimal Link Condition, enligt vilken grammatiken alltid väljer den kortaste möjliga flyttningen. Föreliggande uppsats söker att pröva denna hypotes genom en empirisk undersökning av kilkonstruktionens användning under yngre fornsvenska och äldre nysvenska. Uppsatsen visar att kilkonstruktionen som helhet minskar i frekvens under övergången till äldre nysvenska, men att valet av kil under hela den undersökta perioden i stort tycks vara kompatibelt med den av Minimal Link Condition predicerade kilhierarkin. Ett antal undantag kvarstår dock som svårförklarliga inom ramen för MLC, framför allt under tidig yngre fornsvenska, vilket belyser behovet av vidare forskning om kilkonstruktionens syntaktiska villkor.

Gas chromatography (GC) is an analytical chemistry tool used to determine the chemical composition of a gas sample by separating sample analytes as they travel through a GC column. Recent efforts have been made to understand and control gas chromatography separations with a negative thermal gradient on the column. The present work presents results from thermal gradient GC separations on two GC columns in different configurations (serpentine and radial) in a stainless-steel plate. Methods to fabricate the GC systems capable of isothermal, temperature programmed and thermal gradient separations are presented. Isothermal experimental data from the serpentine column were used to fit retention and dispersion parameters in a transport model that simulates GC separation for hydrocarbons C12-C14. Transport model simulated retention times and peak widths matched experimental values well for isothermal, temperature programmed and thermal gradient separations. The validated transport model was used to study the effect of static (not varying temporally) thermal gradients on GC separations with varying injection widths, injection band shapes and stationary phase thickness. Resolution results from different heating conditions were considered comparable if retention times for each analyte were within 5%. An optimal, static thermal gradient is shown to reduce analyte band spreading from axially-varying velocity gradients with resolution improvements over isothermal separations of up to 8% for analytes with similar retention factors. Static thermal gradients have a larger effect on fronting peak shape than tailing peak shape. Stationary phase distribution acts similar to a velocity gradient and can be corrected by a thermal gradient. Another transport model was created from isothermal experimental data on a commercial column for hydrocarbons C12-C20. An optimal, static thermal gradient does not improve resolution for all analyte pairs. An optimal, dynamic (varying tempo-rally) thermal gradient is created by uniformly increasing the temperature on an optimal, static thermal gradient. Improvements in resolution of up to 20% are achievable over temperature programmed GC separation. A dynamic thermal gradient can also correct for a poor sample injection by creating a temperature trap at the beginning of the column.

Thesis (LLD.) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The private sector in South Africa lags in proliferating black African women into managerial positions. This is so despite the Employment Equity Act (EEA) requiring that the private sector must ensure that all occupational levels are equitably represented and reflects the demographics of South Africa. Since the EEA, the private sector has been white male-dominated and white females enjoy preference in terms of recruitment compared to black African women. Despite the legislative gaps in South Africa, the South African private sector demonstrates its unwillingness to transform it's by managerial positions by engaging in race-based recruitment, failing to train and develop black African women within the workplace, failing to create pipeline mechanisms into managerial positions and creating a workplace environment that caters for the needs and interest of women at leadership levels. The progression of black African women requires South Africa to adopt a quota system that will result in the private sector being compelled to appoint suitably qualified black African women. The EEA does require the private sector to apply affirmative action measures to achieve equity in the workplace. It is submitted that since 1998 the private sector has been provided with an opportunity to set their targets to achieve equity, 20 years later black African women are excluded in key managerial positions. Some private sector companies engage in fronting practices to obtain a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) certificate that enables the company to do business with the State. Black African women who are appointed as a ‘front’ do not obtain the necessary experience in managerial levels and as such limits their economic participation. Exposing black African women in managerial levels enhances their skills and increases their prospects to promotions and assuming further leadership roles in the private sector. Without a clear, a quota law in South Africa, the South African private sector would not be persuaded to accelerate the equitable representation at its managerial positions. xiii

Construction companies, in particular, abuse the objectives of BEE in order to secure multimillion-rand contracts. Misrepresentations, specifically to the Department of Public Works, are made in various forms and stages during the submission of tender documentation by contractors. The status of BEE company owners is abused in order to secure contracts. Apartheid in South Africa prevented black citizens from entering the corporate world and thereby attaining a quality education. The South African government has, since 1994, adopted the BEE policy in order to redress racial and economic imbalances of the past. Fronting (which is regarded as fraud) is detrimental to the objectives of BEE, which are governed by legislation. Fronting further negatively affects the transformation of the South African economy which could be globally competitive. Fraud detection and its investigation are two concepts which are closely linked to each other and are vitally important to any fraud investi-gator. / Police Practice / M. Tech. (Forensic Investigation)