The fuzzball model of a black hole is an attempt to resolve the many paradoxes and puzzles of black hole physics that have revealed themselves over the last century. These badly behaved solutions of general relativity have given physicists one of the few laboratories to test candidate quantum theories of gravity. Though little is known about exactly what lies beyond the event horizon, and what the ultimate fate of matter that falls in to a black hole is, we know a few intriguing and elegant semi-classical results that have kept physicists occupied. Among these are the known black hole entropy and the Hawking radiation process.

This work examines the chemical and physical effects of a material treatment process on the biopolymers PEEK, POM-h, POM-c, PTFE and UHMWPE. The polymers are analyzed physically and chemically using atomic force microscopy, profilometry, scanning electron microscopy, optical microscopy, contact angle measurement, FT infra-red spectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. PEEK is found to be the most suitable polymer and FT Infra-red spectroscopy an informative analytic tool.

Paper discusses the expected uncertainty of orbital parameters of binary stars as measured by the space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) and how the inclusion of spin in the model of the binary stars affects the uncertainty. The uncertainties are found by calculating the received gravitational wave from a binary pair and then performing a linear least-squares parameter estimation. The case of a 1500 solar mass black hole that is 20 years from coalescing with a 1000 solar mass black hole--both of which are 50 x 10^6 light years away--is analyzed, and the results show that the inclusion of spin has a negligible effect upon the angular resolution of LISA but can increase the accuracy in mass and distance measurements by factors of 15 and 65, respectively.

Dit is nie oordrewe om te beweer dat die Suid-Afrikaanse onderwyssisteem tans midde-in 'n krisis staan nie. Dat ook die tersiere onderwyssektor ten nouste deur die omvang van hierdie krisis geraak word, kan nie betwis word nie. Die dilemma soos wat dit huidig binne die onderwys manifesteer, is direk herleibaar tot die jarelange apartheidsbeleid van die verlede. Dit is besonderlik die tersiere onderwyssektor wat 'n onvoldoende verrekening van die behoeftes van die gemeenskap weerspieel - veral die onderwysgerigte probleme en uitdagings binne die breer Afrikakonteks. In 'n poging om die onderwysspeelveld gelyk te maak, is indringende veranderings en hervormings besig om plaas te vind aan die bree onderwysfront. Verskeie onderwysimperatiewe tree na vore:Regstellings met betrekking tot die diskrepansie in onderwysstandaarde; Die toekomstige onderwysbehoeftes van die groeiende bevolking wat geakkommodeer moet word; Opgeleide mannekrag wat voorsien moet word ten einde 'n lewensvatbare en progressiewe ekonomie te verseker Die eiesoortige probleme van groot massas individue wat ongeskoold is of wat beskik oor 'n minderwaardige skoolopleiding, wat aangespreek moet word. Een van die grootste struikelblokke wat staan in die weg om die voorgenoemde probleemareas daadwerklik aan te spreek, is dosente aan tersiere onderwysinstansies se oenskynlike gebrek aan toereikende onderrig- en begeleidingsvaardighede. In die literatuurstudie is verskeie navorsingsbevindinge aangehaal wat daarop dui dat die meerderheid dosente vasgevang is in 'n nimmereindigende gejaag na die verwerwing van kwalifikasies en die publisering van navorsingsresultate - ongelukkig ten koste van doeltreffende onderrig en begeleiding van studente. Hierbenewens het dit ook aan die lig gekom dat meer as 80% van alle dosente aan geselekteerde tersiere onderwysinstansies in Suid-Afrika, oor geen vorm van formele onderrigkwalifikasies beskik nie.n Vraelys is ontwikkel ten einde te bepaal tot watter mate bevestiging vir die literatuurbevindinge in die praktyk gevind kon word en ook om dosente se algemene persepsies te toets met betrekking tot die doseerprofessie in sy geheel. Daar is veral klem gele op die onderskeie komponente van dosentskap - begeleiding en onderrig, navorsing, administrasie en gemeenskapsdiens. Drie bree kategoriee dosente is betrek by die studie, naamlik diegene verteenwoordigend van: Histories Afrikaanse Instellings; Histories Engelse Instellings; en Histories Swart Instellings. Uit hoofde van die bevindinge van die empiriese ondersoek, is praktykgerigte riglyne vir onderrig en begeleiding binne andragogiese konteks neergele. / It is not an exaggeration to maintain that the educational system in South Africa finds itself in the midst of a crisis. It can furthermore not be denied that tertiary education in particular is profoundly involved in this crisis. The dilemma which presently manifests in the educational sector is without doubt the result of the prolonged apartheidspolicy of the past. The tertiary sector, in particular, reflects an inadequate consideration of the unique needs of the broader community. In an effort to level the educational playfield, incisive changes and reconstruction are currently taking place in the broader educational sector. Various educational imperatives emerge:Affirmative action with regard to the discrepency in educational standards have to be addressed; The future educational needs of the growing South African population have to be accommodated; Qualified manpower that has to be provided so as to ensure a viable and progressive economy; The unique problems of large numbers of individuals who are unskilled or who are in possession of an inferior school education, have to be considered. A major obstacle in the way of addressing the aforementioned problem areas, is lecturers' apparent lack of sufficient teaching and accompaniment skills. Various research findings are quoted which point to the fact that the majority of lecturers are trapped in a spiral of obtaining qualifications and publishing research findings. This process unfortunately impacts negatively on effective teaching and the accompaniment of students. ·A related finding confirms that more than 80% of all lecturers at selected tertiary institutions in South Africa are not in possession of a professional teaching qualification. A questionnaire was developed in order to establish to which degree confirmation could be found in practice for the literature findings and also to establish lecturers' general perceptions with regard to the teaching profession. Emphasis was placed on the different components of the lecturing task. Three broad categories of lecturers were involved in the study, namely those representing: Historically Afrikaans Institutions; Historically English Institutions; and Historically black institutions. In view of the findings of the empirical study, practice-based guidelines for teaching and accompaniment within andragogical context were put forward. / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (Orthopedagogics)

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:36:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MeriseMM.pdf: 733823 bytes, checksum: df9e14106c489e3fe83604981e093918 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-04-14 / The present paper is focused on pedagogical practices and continued lecturing formation of High School Mathematic teachers. Knowing the essential importance of the teacher at the educational process since he/she is the mediator on knowledge gathering by the scholars and continued formation meaning on that process, we hereby propose to investigate and compare what Math teachers think about their professional role, the kind of continued formation they receive and their development on teacher s knowledge and doing; to gather and compare what do Math teachers know about young people at public and private schools and their demands and as which find out if they link with the way as their students are taught. To develop our comparative research, we chose a qualitative focus and an investigation of ethnographic type. We took as the subject four Math teachers that work with high school 1st and 2nd grades in public and private schools, morning and afternoon shifts and license titles. The research results reveal differences in structural matter between the spaces, but the comparisons between teacher doings and knowledge reveal that the differences refer to the sort of formation and how often do the teachers search for it. Nevertheless, the reports pointed to continued lecturing formation offering and consistence problems and these reflect on their work and on its basis. The knowledge about youth and adolescence, such as theoric and methodological knowledge that lead their practices, are revealers of teachers difficulties in developing their activities according to the target public and nowadays educational demands / O presente trabalho delimitou como objeto de estudo as pr?ticas pedag?gicas e forma??o docente continuada de professores de Matem?tica no Ensino M?dio. Entendendo ser o professor de grande relev?ncia no processo educativo por ser o mediador na apreens?o de saberes por parte dos educandos e da import?ncia que tem a forma??o continuada neste processo, procedeu-se ? investiga??o e compara??o sobre o que pensam os professores de sua atua??o profissional, o tipo de forma??o continuada que recebem e seus desdobramentos nos saberes e fazeres docentes. Buscou-se, tamb?m, apreender e comparar o que sabem os professores de Matem?tica das escolas p?blica e privada sobre juventude e suas demandas e como tal saber se relaciona com a forma como ensinam seus alunos. Para o desenvolvimento dessa pesquisa de car?ter comparativo, optou-se pelo enfoque qualitativo e investiga??o do tipo etnogr?fico. Foram tomados como sujeitos 04 professores de Matem?tica que atuam nas 1? e 2? s?ries do Ensino M?dio em escolas p?blicas e privadas, nos turnos matutino e vespertino e com titula??o de licenciados. Os resultados dessa pesquisa revelaram diferen?as de ?mbito estrutural entre os espa?os, mas as compara??es entre os fazeres e saberes docentes revelaram que as diferen?as existentes se referem mais ao tipo de forma??o e freq??ncia com que os professores a buscam. No entanto, todos os relatos apontaram para problemas quanto ao oferecimento e consist?ncia da forma??o docente continuada e isso se reflete em suas pr?ticas e de como as fundamentam. O entendimento sobre juventude e adolesc?ncia, bem como os saberes te?rico-metodol?gicos que norteiam suas pr?ticas s?o reveladores das dificuldades sentidas pelos professores em desenvolver seus fazeres de acordo com o p?blico ao qual se destina e com as demandas educacionais atuais.

This study examined the language socialization of international students in the graduate school context of a western Canadian university. Focusing on one pervasive speech event, academic presentations (APs), this study explored the role this socioculturally organized activity played in facilitating students' linguistic and sociocultural development, and how it aided them in negotiating their entry into the academic world. The participants in this study included 55 graduate students and nine course instructors. Thirty seven students were native speakers (NSs) of English, while the remaining 18- -the focal participants of this study—were non-native speakers of English (NNSs). The sites were seven graduate courses in six different departments in three different faculties (Faculty of Medicine, Faculty o f Arts, and Faculty o f Applied Science). A qualitative approach was employed, and thus multiple kinds of data were gathered over a four-month period. Data collection methods included: (a) open-ended interviews with participants; (b) tape-recorded observations of APs; (c) researcher's fieldnotes of APs; and (d) collection of written documents (e.g., course outlines). Data were analyzed following Bogdan and Biklen (1992) by identifying major and minor themes while iteratively going over the data. A comparison of APs across disciplines is included, examining aspects such as A P content, sequence, length, and format. As well, an analysis of the qualities promoted in each field and of the multiple purposes APs fulfil is provided and related to the complex socialization (i.e., both linguistic and sociocultural) of international graduate students. Findings of the study suggested that APs are a complex task whose meaning is not fixed, but rather is determined by the interplay of the broad context of the academic world, the micro-context of each community of practice, and ultimately by each individual. With regard to the language socialization 6f NNSs, APs challenged students in both linguistic and sociocultural ways. However, by observing, participating in, and reflecting on APs, students gained increased membership and competence within their academic communities. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Increasing involvement with students at the University of Namibia has indicated their overall difficulty with comprehending and recalling information from oral content lectures. It has also been observed that in general very little attention is given to the development of listening skills in L2 ESP and EAP courses. For this study, I conducted a quasi-experiment to determine whether the recognition and interpretation of discourse markers will enhance students' listening comprehension in academic lectures. Students were tested to determine their comprehension of content information in a video-taped lecture. Qualitative data were collected by means of a questionnaire. After an intervention period of eight weeks, where the experimental group received strategy training in the recognition and interpretation of discourse markers in spoken texts, both groups were again tested. Their results were statistically compared. I also looked at related findings of other researchers. Finally, aspects for possible future research will also be considered. / English Studies / MA - (Specialisation in TESOL)

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Magister Technologiae: Human Resources Management, Durban University of Technology, 2012. / The research project focussed on the effectiveness of an induction programme for newly appointed staff at Coastal KZN FET College in Kwa-Zulu Natal. The main aim of the study was to investigate the perceptions of educators with regard to the effectiveness of the induction programme for newly appointed lecturers. The key findings of the research were that newly appointed lecturers experienced various problems. The study also explored experiences faced by newly appointed lecturers at Coastal KZN FET College. The challenges arise from the lack of an effective induction programme. These problems resulted in poor productivity among newly appointed lecturers. The empirical component underpinned the review and analysis of the effectiveness of an induction programme for newly-appointed lecturers as they adjust to their entry into the teaching profession. The study also investigated the high turnover (lecturer attrition) among newly appointed lecturers as well as the possible solutions which can be implemented. The survey method was used to administer the questionnaire to all 45 target respondents using the personal method. The study adopted the quantitative research method with precoded close ended questions. The personal method was used to administer the questionnaire to all 45 target respondent and in this way a high response rate of 100% was obtained. An important finding in this regard was that the induction programme was not evaluated and improved frequently. The induction programme should ensure that new lecturers are treated with dignity and are allowed the opportunity to display their strengths and the knowledge they bring to their new College by implementing an effective induction programme. Arising out of the empirical analysis the researcher has recommended and developed a set of guidelines which could be used in developing an effective induction programme for the Coastal FET College in Kwa-Zulu Natal. The study concludes with directions for future research to expand on the body of knowledge in this field. / M

This is a qualitative research that draws on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis methodology to analyze the discourse practices of the mathematics teacher educators in initial teacher training colleges in Malawi. The study involved four mathematics teacher educators in two teacher training colleges located in two different regions of Malawi. Specifically the study explored the following questions: 1) What are the discourse practices that mathematics teacher educators display in their descriptions of multilingual mathematics classrooms? 2) a) What are the discourse practices that mathematics teacher educators display in a college mathematics classroom? b) How do they make available the discourse practices for the student teachers to draw on? Data was collected through pre-observation interviews, classroom observations, reflective interviews and focus group discussions with the mathematics teacher educators. This study has shown that while there are some disconnections between the discourse practices produced in a school multilingual mathematics classroom and a college mathematics classroom, some of the discourse practices that mathematics teachers produced in a college mathematics classroom reinforces the common discourse practices being produced in multilingual mathematics classroom. There are three common discourse practices that were displayed in a college mathematics classroom. These discourse practices are: Initial-Response-Evaluation (Pimm, 1987), traditional lecturing and group discussions. I observed that the IRE and traditional lecturing discourse practices were accompanied by directive discourses for procedural control, and the procedural discourse was the prevalent discourse in all the discourse practices produced. iv Three major themes have emerged from the data analysis. Firstly, the research findings indicate that the mathematics teacher educators regard multilingualism and the language practices that come with it such as code-switching more as a problem rather than a resource for teaching and learning. Secondly, code-switching in college mathematics classroom is not as spontaneous as is research shows it to be in schools; rather it is very much controlled and restricted. Thirdly, the dilemmas of code-switching as discussed by Adler (1998, 2001) are more acute in teacher training colleges, mainly because of the mismatch in the Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) in schools and tertiary level.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:34:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cintia Aparecida Pereira Ortiz.pdf: 8371862 bytes, checksum: 1d0af6a0403c23056ef92c5f157d6fb8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-19 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / It is an empirical research about existing spaces of interaction on a basic educational course to develop teachers long distance type of course. The study intends to analyze such spaces on a course that has communicative support tools interacting with communicative peculiarities of the cyber-space, by means of different agents visions teachers and pupils as well as verifying how the relations-interactions of those that act in the educative process happen in this type of teachers development, identifying/pointing out such interactions and considering the hypothesis that, although the physical presence of teacher and pupils at the same time and space, does not guarantee the availability of those who act in order to do necessaries interactions to the professional development of the professor. The development in a virtual environment, the proper conditions to promote exchanges and interactions suffer time and space alterations that certainly have impacts on the interactions nature among the agents in this type of long distance process of formation. In this research it has been use as reference, theoretical authors dedicated to long distance education studies. (Aretio, Moran, Neto and Keegan, among others) and authors that has focused on the educational teachers formation process as well as the construction of teachers lecturing knowledge (Walter, Candido, Garcia, Tardif, Nunes andMarin, among others). The procedures of this research for the collection of data held in the years 2008 and 2009 include the use of a questionary applied to 21 pupils from a long distance Pedagogy Course, interviews with 1 monitor (local-tutor) and 1 teacher (web-tutor), besides register and documents analyses and observation of the interactions situations existent during the course. The obtained results are presented by synthesis tables, describing: long distance course of teachers formation context and profile, who of the investigated people (pupils, teachers or web-tutors and monitors or local-tutors) and what they say about the Course and the interaction situations within / Trata-se de uma pesquisa empírica sobre os espaços de interação existentes num curso de formação de professores para educação básica curso de Pedagogia, na modalidade à distância. O estudo pretende analisar tais espaços em curso que tem como suporte ferramentas de comunicação interativas com as particularidades comunicativas do cyber-espaço, por meio das visões de seus diferentes agentes professores e alunos bem como verificar como se dão as relações/interações entre esses atores do processo educativo nesta modalidade de formação de professores, identificando / caracterizando tais interações e considerando a hipótese de que, embora a presença física de professores e alunos, no mesmo tempo e espaço, por si só não garanta a disponibilidade dos agentes para as interações necessárias à formação profissional docente, em ambientes de formação virtual as condições próprias para a promoção de trocas e interações sofrem alterações de tempo e de espaço que, certamente, têm impactos na natureza das interações entre os agentes desse processo de formação à distância. Para realização da pesquisa foram utilizados como referenciais teóricos autores dedicados ao estudo da educação à distância (Aretio, Moran, Neto e Keegan, entre outros) e autores voltados para o estudo dos processos de formação de professores e de construção dos saberes docentes (Waller, Candido, Garcia, Tardif, Nunes e Marin, entre outros). Os procedimentos de pesquisa, para a coleta de dados realizada nos anos de 2008 e 2009, incluíram o uso de questionários aplicados a 21 alunos de um Curso de Pedagogia à distância, entrevistas com 01 monitor (tutor-local) e 01 professor (tutor-web), além da análise de registros e documentos e da observação das situações de interação presentes no curso. Os resultados obtidos são apresentados em quadros-síntese, descrevendo: contexto e perfil do curso de formação de professores à distância, quem dos sujeitos investigados (alunos, professores ou tutores-web e monitores ou tutores-local) e o que dizem a respeito do curso e das situações de interação nele presentes