Wetlands in most parts of the world are under threat of over-exploitation, loss and/or degradation partly due to agriculture and urban land uses. Yala swamp, the largest fresh water wetland in Kenya measuring about 17,500 ha supports a large biodiversity and is source of livelihoods to communities around it. This study addresses the situation where part of this wetland is converted into large-scale agriculture by a multinational company, Dominion Farms (K) Ltd resulting into a conflict and controversy amongst key stakeholders. The study sought to investigate livelihood impacts this transformation has for the local community. It employs the concepts Stakeholder Analysis (SA) and Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) to asses the livelihood situation in terms of socio-economic conditions, rural infrastructure, income diversification, food security and environmental issues. Data and information have been obtained from primary and secondary sources through field survey at the Yala wetland, in which randomly sampled small-scale farmers, fisher folk, Dominion employees, local leaders and informants, traders and other stakeholders were interviewed using questionnaire and other participatory methods. The main questions were designed to gain information about historical use of the wetland, changes in livelihoods and wetland before and after entry of Dominion Company into the area. From the study, it is evident that assessment of the key stakeholders in relation to this natural resource is of utmost importance for mapping out an acceptable management strategy for the wetland. Besides being cause to a conflict and controversy over control of and access to the swamp, the conversion has resulted into both negative and positive short-term and long-term livelihood impacts to the local community. The wetland being a contested resource with multiple users who claim a stake on it requires a holistic approach in its management that caters for divergent needs and views of key stakeholder groups. The study identifies management issues and proposes abroad vision for the future including recommendations for planning as well as suggestions for specific research needs that should form the basis of action

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Within the accepted historiography of photography, the importance of George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company (EKC) has become unassailable. They have been placed as the key, and often sole, agent in “revolutionizing” the amateur photography market in the late nineteenth century. While the photographic landscape and market of 1885-1914 was indeed radically altered, the historiographical dominance of what can be identified as the “Kodak story” has obscured the means through which EKC’s successful re-structuring of the existing manufacturing and distribution networks of photographic materials occurred. I argue that the changes effected by Eastman and the EKC began not with imaging desires, but with their acknowledgment, and profound understanding of the existing and competing interests within the photographic industry. This thesis focuses on the EKC’s re-structuring of the extant and evolving communities involved in the manufacturing and distribution of photographic materials in Canada between 1885-1910. Focusing particularly on the period immediately surrounding the establishment of the Canadian Kodak Co. Limited in 1899, I demonstrate the re-structuring processes at work, including: market and financial diversification; governmental lobbying; purchase and mergers; and other business and marketing-based strategies. I frame my theoretical positions and analysis of network re-structuring through the experiences of Ottawa professional photographer and photographic business owner William James Topley (active 1868-1907), and CKCoLtd manager John Garrison Palmer (active 1886-1921). Topley and Garrison’s professional experiences and interactions with expanded communities of photographic consumers and industry participants provide an opportunity for specific and detailed findings which challenge understandings of the evolution of the practice of photography during this transitional period. In doing so, I provide evidence of the primary role network re-structuring played in the EKC’s ability to shape the wider international photographic industry to their advantage in the early twentieth century.

The South African National Roads Agency Ltd (SANRAL) is the custodian of the 9 208km national road network in South Africa. SANRAL's mandate is to develop, maintain and operate this national economic asset. 26,3°/o of the national road network consists of toll roads. The operation and maintenance of the toll facilities are let by SANRAL through a public open tender process. The successful tenderer is then appointed by SANRAL on a contract basis as the toll road operator. The operation and management of toll facilities involve various technical and managerial disciplines, such as electrical, mechanical and civil engineering, toll collection, and operations management. Historically, toll operations contracts were fragmented into separate sub-contracts for each of the disciplines. This resulted in a substantial amount of project management input from SANRAL. In addition to SANRAL's high level of management input, it also carried the risk of fraud. SANRAL had no incentives for a toll operator to increase the toll revenues, neither did it impose any penalties for poor performance. In order to simplify the project structure, as well as to improve on the old toll contract format, SANRAL developed a new toll operations contract model, aptly named Comprehensive Toll Road Operations and Maintenance or CTROM (C-T -ROM). Amongst others, the benefits of the new contract format are: • That it simplifies SANRAL's management input by providing a single point of contact between SANRAL and a principal toll operator, under whose supervision all the sub-contractors reside. The toll operator therefore assumes the responsibility and accountability to manage the sub-contractors. • The introduction of penalties that are imposed on the toll operator, should he not perform his contractually specified duties and obligations. • The transfer of fraud risk to the toll operator. • An increase in the toll revenue by offering the toll operator a revenue-sharing incentive. The first contracts let under the CTROM format were the N2 North Coast Toll Road and the N2 South Coast Toll Road in July 2001. As these toll routes had been in operation for a while before the CTROM contracts were procured, comparisons could be made on the pre-CTROM and post-CTROM costs. Initial indications were, although there were some structural differences between the old and the new format, that these two CTROM contracts were between 7 and 13°/o more expensive than their predecessors. An extrapolation of these values to all the current CTROM contracts results in additional costs to SANRAL of between R 10m and R 20m per annum, when compared to the previously used managed contract format. The more expensive CTROM contracts have brought about significant benefits, such as the tra'nsfer of fraud risk from SANRAL to the toll operator, as well as a simpler project structure in the form of a single point of responsibility. The intention of this research report is to determine whether the increase in cost has been worthwhile, and whether there are areas for further improvement. In other words, are the more expensive CTROM contracts providing SANRAL with an associated increase in value for its money? Not only is SANRAL concerned with the prudential expenditure of its toll revenues, but it is also under legislated obligations to ensure that funds are spent in the most appropriate and efficient ways. In order to better understand value for money and related concepts, the author explores various academic theories in the form of a literature study. By building a platform from which to conduct further analyses, the author can then apply the newly found knowledge to test the hypothesis that SANRAL is not achieving optimal value for money on its CTROM contracts. Concepts and theories that are studied in the literature review include: • The legislative and institutional framework; and • Key terminology such as risk management, the public sector comparator, value for money, and performance penalties on contracts. Many of the concepts have been explored worldwide, especially in developed countries such as Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, where those countries' governments actively encourage private sector investment in public infrastructure. In the analytical part of the research report, the author explores the causes of the additional costs on two of SANRAL's toll routes, namely: • The Mariannhill Toll Route, which is located on the N3 between Pinetown and Key Ridge in the province of KwaZulu-Natal; and • The N 17 Toll Route between Springs and Wemmer Pan in the province of Gauteng. The analyses suggest that the operations and maintenance (O&M) costs of the N3 Mariannhill and N 17 toll routes under the CTROM contracts are 46,3°/o and 20,4°/o more expensive than on the previous contracts. Some of the factors that could play a role in the increased cost of the CTROM contracts are: • The contract duration; • Risk transfer to the toll operator; • Penalties applied when the toll operator does not conform to the required specifications; and • Complex performance specifications. University of Pretoria Graduate School of Management MBA Research Report RPJ820 v P Suremann 91052719 October 2004 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services, 2014 The author concludes that there are a number of factors that negatively influence the cost of the CTROM contracts. The author therefore recommends that the factors that are within the control of SANRAL be changed. These improvements should bring about better value for money on SANRAL's toll operations contracts. / Dissertation (MAdmin)--University of Pretoria, 2004. / gm2014 / School of Public Management and Administration / unrestricted

Magister Legum - LLM / This mini-thesis aims to contribute to the debate around the legislative process by summarizing and analysing it comprehensively. It will, without being exhaustive, seek to identify the most important legal requirements that the future Statute needs to meet in order to facilitate cross-border business of small and medium-sized businesses. It seeks to systematise and comment on the most important legal Key Issues and therefore clarify and enrich the debate. / South Africa

International awareness and demands for the protection of the environment by the public on industry has only been pushed into the limelight in the past couple of decades. Prior to this it could be argued that it was accepted that environmental protection and economic development were at odds. However it has since been recognised that there is a need to achieve environmental sustainability, the concept of which was released in the 1987 Brundtland Report released by the United Nations. There are a number of ways that industry can reduce its impact on the environment and thus help reach this goal. While some advocated that stricter legislation would result in greater innovation by industry in “cleaning-up” its act, such as the Porter Hypothesis, there were also a number of new concepts and voluntary industry codes being developed. These new practices and codes have been promoted by organisations such as the International Chamber of Commerce and include technological improvements within organisations and improved resource productivity. The aim of this case study research was to find out what the environmental policy and related performance of Summerpride Foods Ltd, a pineapple processing factory in East London was and does an understanding of its environmental performance provide insights for improved efficiency. This involved the identification and analysis of what resources were used during the processing of pineapples as well as making recommendations that would result in increased efficiencies of their use. Due to the number of resources identified, only the use of water and coal which were ranked as having the highest impact were investigated further. The literature review showed that there are industry moves to applying cleaner production and eco-efficiency concepts as a means to attaining environmental sustainability. There are a number of voluntary environmental management system standards and codes that organisations can subscribe to with most probably the ISO 14001 standard being the most internationally recognised. There are many benefits to organisations adopting such standards. The use of lifecycle assessments is a useful tool that can be used to assess the environmental impact of a product through its entire life and thus enable one to identify all resources used and their impact, as well as to provide the information required to quantify areas where the greatest improvements can be made. The results of this research showed that at the start of the study, there was no formal environmental policy in place at Summerpride Foods Ltd and that this was starting to become a requirement with some customers. The detailed results which focused on water and coal usage showed that current operating methods do not recognise the importance of any wastage and that there are a number of changes that could be made that would not only result in better efficiency of use but would also result in substantial financial savings to the organisation. Summerpride Foods Ltd currently has a number of systems in place that help reduce its impact on the environment but these are not formally recorded. Summerpride Foods Ltd should adopt the principles of eco-efficiency and record all systems that impact on the environment. This would be the first step to attaining a formal environmental management system accreditation which due the increasing competitiveness of the international market in which Summerpride Foods Ltd operates, would give it a degree of advantage over those competing pineapples processing factories that do not have such accreditation.

Gold exploration in the laterite terrains of the Siguiri basin (Guinea-West Africa) is discussed in this thesis. It seeks to propose and develop effective and reliable geochemical exploration techniques applied in such laterite terrains. The study is also intended to investigate and provide some geological clues as to why, in some target areas, the reconnaissance test drilling across the geochemical anomalies couldn’t intersect economic gold mineralisation. Targets were generated based on soil geochemical results, some of which were drilled without delivering economic discoveries even on areas with strong and consistent geochemical signatures. To find the failure and define the appropriate methods to be used is the core of the thesis. More importantly, the geological observation is aimed at sourcing and establishing the nature and validity of geochemical anomalies within the license area and their relationship with the underlying lithologies and structural networks. The geological field work conducted during this study is mostly based on regolith and surface geological mapping. The thick laterite cover, deep weathering, bedrock geology, gold geochemistry (the gold geochemical anomalous results are defined according to historical data before 2007), soil formations and variations in climate conditions are emphasized to illustrate the importance of mineral element mobility and dispersion in the weathering profiles. The knowledge and experience in regolith geochemistry and regolith mapping provide the advantage to exploration geologists. The depletion of ore resources and reserves in Siguiri and the continuous decline of the gold price in comparison to the complexity of exploring for gold are demanding more scientific-related thoughts and techniques to be integrated in the available geological, geochemical and geophysical information so as to reduce costs. The integration of good exploration strategy and technique may result in the possibility of making viable discoveries in this highly competitive geological environment where the mineral resources become depleted every day.

Cannabinoids have been shown to alter synaptic plasticity but the mechanism by which this occurs at hippocampal CA3-CA1 synapses in vivo is not yet known. Utilizing in vivo electrophysiological recordings of field excitatory postsynaptic potentials (fEPSP) on anesthetized rats and mice as well as three lines of conditional knockout mouse models, the objective was to show a two-part mechanistic breakdown of cannabinoid-evoked CA3-CA1 long-term depression (LTD) in its induction as well as early and later-phase expression stages. It was determined that this cannabinoid-induced in vivo LTD requires cannabinoid type-1 receptors (CB1Rs) on astrocytes, but not CB1Rs on glutamatergic or GABAergic neuronal axons/terminals. Pharmacological testing determined that cannabinoid-induced in vivo LTD also requires activation of NMDA receptors (NMDAR) and subsequent postsynaptic endocytosis of AMPA receptors (AMPAR). There exists a clear role for NR2B-containing NMDARs in a persistent, transitory form, potentially related to prolonged or delayed glutamate release (possibly as a result of the astrocytic network). A key determination of the expression phase is the involvement of new protein synthesis (using translation and transcription inhibitors) – further evidence of the long-term action of the synaptic plasticity from a single cannabinoid dose.

This master thesis is based on analyses of the Cypriot banking sector from 2010 to 2016. The aim is to describe the effects of the recent financial crisis in Cyprus to locally operating banks, to assess the assistance provided to Cypriot banks and especially to analyze the development of systemically important Cypriot banking institutions, namely the Bank of Cyprus Group, Cooperative Central Bank, Hellenic Bank and RCB Bank Ltd with emphasis on the most important banking institution in Cyprus. The work draws mainly from published financial results of the systemic banks and from the Central Bank of Cyprus representing the consolidated banking sector. Furthermore, for the purpose of this study was used the Eurostat database, EBA and the IMF periodicals, along with the websites of the credit rating agencies.

Wireless is an important part of the future and utilizing the wireless technology in project management is a great tool. This project is a messaging system designed using WAP and Java Server pages, as both of them are the technologies of the future. The project puts together a tool to help in project management made with the use of Java Server Pages and MySQL as the backend database. It uses Wireless Markup Language as the basic language for the cellular phones and the hand held wireless devices. The prototype has been modeled on project planning for power plants done by Asea Brown Boveri, Ltd.