Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2009

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / This research originated from a focus group which the student was part of as a research assistant. The focus group concentrated on LGBT aging and care where participants who are HIV positive spoke about their concerns. The Anti Oppressive practice was deemed suitable for this study as it gives charity on social justice movements as the major roots necessitating the emergence of anti-oppressive practice in social work (Wilson & Beresford, 2000; Thompson, 2002, 2003). Social work, in being a unique profession, contains several distinct approaches and philosophies regarding care, what it constitutes and how to stop or slow social problems that generate the need for care. The project was funded by the National Research Fund.

A collection of poems that explore the imagined possible deaths of a father and ultimately the concepts of absence and lack through a contemplation of spaces like fields and cemeteries / MFA

Measuring and monitoring performance of employees is an integral part of management. The need for an effective appraisal system to manage and monitor the performance of employees is self-evident in this country. The appraisal system for office-based educators is informed by the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) Collective Agreement No. 3 of 2002, which was signed on 11 December 2002. This appraisal system was developed with good intensions of enhancing the performance of office-based educators, and the prime aim being to manage and improve service delivery at all levels in the system. The objective of the study is to investigate the perceptions of the office-based educators on the implementation of the appraisal system. Do office-based educators perceive it that way? As implementers and direct beneficiaries, are the good intensions of the policy yielded when its implementation is faced with realities and practicalities of the implementation of the policy? The vehicle I used to achieve the goal of the study was quantitative approach. Self administered questionnaires were completed by respondents. The questionnaire consisted of one open-ended question which gave the respondents sufficient room to voice their opinions without restrictions and the close-ended questions. The sample was the whole population of the office-based educators in the Dr Ruth S. Mompati district office, department of education, North West province. The total number is only 103 and it was manageable. The analysis of data is illustrated in the form of tables, graphs and brief discussions. A written undertaking to guarantee confidentiality to respondents was given and all respondents signed the undertaking to indicate their voluntary participation. The study is significant in that the findings and recommendations might inform policy custodians on the status and improvement of the quality of the implementation of the appraisal system. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Statistics / Shie-Shien Yang / When the primary research interest is in the marginal dependence between the response and the covariates, logistic GEE (Generalized Estimating Equation) models are often used to analyze clustered binary data. Relative to ordinary logistic regression, very little work has been done to assess the lack of fit of a logistic GEE model. A new method addressing the LOF of a logistic GEE model was proposed. Simulation results indicate the proposed method performs better than or as well as other currently available LOF methods for logistic GEE models. A SAS macro was developed to implement the proposed method. Nonlinear regression models are widely used in medical science. Before the models can be fit and parameters interpreted, researchers need to decide which design points in a prespecified design space should be included in the experiment. Careful choices at this stage will lead to efficient usage of limited resources. We proposed a cost efficient Bayesian optimal design method for nonlinear combinations of parameters in a nonlinear model with quantitative predictors. An R package was developed to implement the proposed method.

When receiving a negative outcome (e.g., rejection in a job interview), people tend to attribute it to different causes. For members of stigmatised groups, discrimination is a plausible cause for a negative outcome. However, because discrimination has become relatively subtle (Ellemers & Barreto, 2015), members of stigmatised groups always live in an attributional ambiguity where they constantly wonder whether discrimination was the cause of the received negative outcome. Some researchers argue that this attributional ambiguity leads members of stigmatised groups to make attributions to discrimination. In doing so, individuals would protect themselves by discounting their own role in the negative outcome they received. In other words, in order to protect their sense of competence, members of stigmatised groups prefer to make attributions to discrimination rather than their lack of deservingness (i.e., attributions to lack of ability; Crocker & Major, 1989; Major, Kaiser, & McCoy, 2003). On the other hand, other researchers argue that making attributions to discrimination is not necessarily self-protective as perceived discrimination can have negative consequences for individuals. It has been suggested that attributional stability plays a key role in determining the extent to which attributions to discrimination and to lack of ability are perceived as a threat to individuals (Branscombe & Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999; Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). In three studies, I examined the extent to which attributions to discrimination and to lack of ability are threatening/challenging as a function of stability of those attributions. Threat and challenge were measured both via self-reported data and cardiovascular markers. The results confirmed the role of attributional stability in perceived threat/challenge. In addition, in another study I examined whether attributional stability influences the extent to which attributions to discrimination and to lack of ability are made. However, the results of this study did not confirm my expectations, instead, participants consistently made more attributions to their lack of ability irrespective of information about attributional stability.

Thesis (MPA.) -- Univesity of Limpopo, 2010 / Refer to document

AssiDomän tillverkar kartong till förpackningsindustrin. Inom detta område är vitheten på kartongytanen viktig parameter. För att höja intrycket av förpackningen samt skapa en skyddande yta lackas ofta förpackningen med UV-lack efter tryck. Efter lackning kan då otryckta lackade ytor uppfattas som mindre vita. För att ta reda på om bestrykningssammansättningen har betydelse har ett fem olika bestrykningar blandats. Pigmenten som använts i bestrykningarna är karbonat, kaolin och titandioxidi olika kombinationer. Kartong har sedan bestrukits med dessa och därefter lackerats med UV-lack. Lackningen har gjorts i tre olika lackmängder. Mätningar har sedan gjorts gällande framförallt vithet. Den samverkan som sker mellan ljus, materialet och dess struktur är av stor vikt för att skapa en yta med goda optiska egenskaper. Resultaten i detta försök visar att lacken påverkar de optiska egenskaperna och framförallt vitheten. De lackerade ytorna fick en gulton efter lackering vilket kan ha att göra med lackens egenskaper. Vitheten hade en något mindre minskning för den bestrykning som bestod av karbonat och titandioxid. Skillnaden var dock mycket liten då alla bestrykningar fick en sänkning av vitheten med cirka 11-13 procentenheter oberoende av utgångsvärdet i vithet för respektive bestrykning innan lackning. Positivt var att det kunde konstateras att den bestrykning som hade det högsta vithetsvärdet före lackning också hade det efter lackning med ett normalt lackpålägg vilket betyder att en hög vithet är av betydelse även om den bestrukna ytan ska lackas. Den sänkning av vitheten som sker kan ha flera tänkbara orsaker. En tänkbar orsak kan vara att lacken förstör den porösa struktur som ger den viktiga ljusspridningen i bestrykningsskiktet. Resultaten visar också att lackens egenskaper tycks vara av stor betydelse. Den gulton som framträdde efter lackning tyder på en ökad absorption av vissa ljusvåglängder. Något som också pekar på detta är att alla fem bestrykningarna fick en liknande sänkning av vitheten. För att säga exakt vad som är orsaken eller vilken kombination som påverkar vitheten mest krävs ytterliggare tester. Olika UV-lacker kan testas eftersom endast en UV-lack har använts i dessa försök. En närmare studie av gränsyta mellan UV-lacken och bestrykningsskiktet bör också göras för att se hur lacken påverkar bestrykningsskiktets struktur.

This thesis is mainly concerned with problems in the areas of the Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). The properties of the functional to minimize with respect to the given topology play an important role in the existence of minimizers of integral problems. We will introduce the important concepts of quasiconvexity and polyconvexity. Inspired by finite element methods from Numerical Analysis, we introduce a perturbed problem which has some surprising uniqueness properties.

Vi har i detta arbete valt att titta närmare på problemet med att vissa bulklaster, exempelvis träpellets och flis, kan orsaka en skadlig atmosfär i lastrummen samt i kringliggande utrymmen. Vårt syfte var att finna lösningar på problemet med att människor råkat illa ut i olyckor involverande nämnda laster samt att bygga upp en erfarenhetsbank som folk i branschen kan ta del av och även dra lärdomar utifrån. Efter att ha läst in oss på ämnet via bl.a. tidningsurklipp, började undersökningen med att vi studerade olycks- samt forskningsrapporter. Vidare valdes deltagarna ut från ett flertal sjöfartsorienterade företag och organisationer. Dessa kontaktades samt intervjuades. Undersökningen visade att det tycks finnas ett flertal orsaker till att olyckor med dessa laster sker. Bl.a. nämndes okunskap och bristande rutiner. Några förslag på lösningar som gavs var att alltid hålla farliga utrymmen låsta samt att aldrig någonsin nöja sig med att mäta syrehalten. Koloxiden är minst lika farlig. / In this work we have chosen to investigate the problem with some solid bulk cargoes, for example woodchips and pellets, generating a dangerous atmosphere in cargo holds and surrounding areas. Our purpose was to find solutions to the problem with people suffering in accidents concerning the already mentioned cargoes and to create a document containing experiences from the people in the business. Later on, others would have an opportunity to learn from these experiences. To start with, we read articles about this problem and soon thereafter begun the investigation. Reports from accidents and scientistic work were read and later on we contacted our participants and proceeded with the interviews. These participants were chosen from several different companies in the shipping cluster. Our work shoved us several different reasons why the accidents occur. Lack of experience and bad routines were mentioned. The suggested actions to be taken were among other things, to lock the doors and not forget to measure the carbon monoxide levels.