This mini-thesis is located in historical discursive practices, choreographing history, biography as a source for making dance in South Africa and choreographic transformations in South African choreography since the 1994 democratic elections. Derridian concepts of deconstruction will be referenced in an attempt to focus the argument of this research, which comments on choreographic transformations since 1994, by subverting the influence of the 'violent hierarchies' enforced by the apartheid regime on South African cultural life and choreographic identity. The researcher draws on these considerations in order to explore the hybrid nature of South African choreography that has emerged since 1994. Chapter one examines the fallacious nature of historical discourse through a consideration and application of Derrida's notions of deconstruction and fabrication. Chapter two explores the notion of choreographing history in theatre through a focus on the objective/subjective fallacy and the history of the body as a textual medium. Chapter three focuses the study specifically in biography as a discourse within the idea of theatre. This approach to biography can be encapsulated by the phrase 'telling lives'. This chapter also explores the relationship between the traditional binaries of writing as a purely cerebral act and choreography as a purely visceral experience. Chapter four brings the focus to the specific post-apartheid South African context. This chapter considers the hybrid forms of dance emerging in South Africa as well as the notion of protest in relation to theatre and dance. The final chapter is an investigation and analysis of two choreographic works created by South African choreographers since 1994 in relation to biography and concepts of deconstruction. These works are Gary Gordon's Bessie's Head (2000) and Gregory Maqoma's Miss Thandi (2002). The focus of the analysis also reveals the inherent difficulty in objective interpretation, and considers the problematics of collaboration and autobiography when choreographing within a biographical context.

Im Schwerpunkt der Dissertation stand die Untersuchung des Zusammenhangs zwischen psychischer Fehlbeanspruchung und Arbeitssicherheit. Psychische Fehlbeanspruchung – mit den Schwerpunkten Über- und Unterforderung – wurde dabei zum einen auf der habituellen Ebene erfasst (mittels Fragebogen). Zum Anderen interessierten die selten oder einmalig auftretenden Fehlbeanspruchungen, die üblicherweise keine Berücksichtigung im Fragebogen finden. Diese wurden mithilfe eines Arbeitstagebuchs erfasst. Die Argumentation für diese differentielle Betrachtungsweise ergibt sich aus der Überlegung, dass während in der Entstehungsgeschichte einer Erkrankung erst eine langfristige Fehlbeanspruchung eine Rolle spielt, kann ein Arbeitsunfall bereits durch eine einmalige oder nur kurzfristig auftretende Fehlbeanspruchung beeinflusst werden. Im Zusammenhang mit der verwendeten Methodik wurde – in einer zusätzlichen Fragestellung - ein sensibilisierender und damit unfallpräventiver Effekt der Tagebuchführung auf die Gefahrenwahrnehmung angenommen und mit einer Pilot-Befragung verifiziert. An der Studie haben vier sächsische Unternehmen der metallverarbeitenden Industrie teilgenommen. Insgesamt 212 männliche Produktionsarbeiter haben einen Fragebogen ausgefüllt (Rücklaufquote: 60%), und 63 von ihnen haben ebenfalls ein vollständig über 15 Arbeitstage geführtes Tagebuch abgegeben. Beide Datenquellen erfassten parallel (als Prädiktoren) die wahrgenommenen Belastungsfaktoren am Arbeitsplatz bzw. die psychische Fehlbeanspruchung (qualitative und quantitative Über- bzw. Unterforderung sowie soziale Belastung) sowie deren negative Folgen (Merkmale von Stress, psychischer Ermüdung und Monotonie). Ebenfalls auf zweierlei Art wurden die Kriterienvariablen erhoben (meldepflichtige Arbeitsunfälle, Verletzungen und Beinahe-Unfälle; im Fragebogen zusätzlich noch ein Index sicheren Verhaltens). Die Ergebnisse der Regressionsanalysen haben die Annahme bestätigt, dass sowohl Überforderung als auch Unterforderung die individuelle Arbeitssicherheit beeinträchtigen. Sicheres Verhalten am Arbeitsplatz wird von Merkmalen der Arbeitsgestaltung, insbesondere durch Unterbrechungen und quantitative Überforderung, negativ beeinflusst. Beeinträchtigend auf die Einhaltung der Arbeitsschutzregeln wirkt sich auch belastendes Verhalten des Vorgesetzten aus. Relevant für die Regeleinhaltung sind ebenfalls die erlebten Folgen einer Über- und Unterforderung: Merkmale psychischer Ermüdung einerseits, Langeweile und Unzufriedenheit mit der Aufgabe andererseits. Interessant sind die Ergebnisse bezüglich der individuellen Variabilität der täglich erlebten Fehlbeanspruchungsfolgen. Mit steigenden Schwankungen von Langeweile und Erschöpfung werden die Arbeitsschutzregeln seltener eingehalten und Beinahe-Unfälle kommen häufiger vor. Erlebte meldepflichtige Unfälle und Verletzungen (im Fragebogen erfasst) stehen lediglich mit zwei tagebuchbasierten Prädiktoren in einem signifikanten Zusammenhang: mit Häufigkeit der sozialen Konflikte und mit der kumulierten Erschöpfung. Diese Faktoren weisen in ihrem Zusammenhang mit individueller Arbeitssicherheit somit eine besonders hohe Validität und Generalisierbarkeit auf. Die Methode der Tagebuchführung stieß, selbst bei einer relativ langen Untersuchungsdauer, auf eine hohe Akzeptanz der Teilnehmer. Die angenommene, auf Gefahren und für Arbeitssicherheit sensibilisierende Wirkung der Tagebuchführung konnte anhand der Selbsteinschätzungen bestätigt werden. Als innovatives und mitarbeiterorientiertes Instrument betrieblicher Unfallprävention hat die Tagebuchführung das Potenzial, einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Umsetzung der Ziele der Gemeinsamen Deutschen Arbeitsschutzstrategie für den Zeitraum 2008 - 2012 zu leisten.

The practice of reporting workplace incident events is adopted as best practice by organizations and complies with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandates. Reporting the near miss incident type in which no injury or damage to equipment or the environment occurs is buttressed by the assumption that both the worker and the organization ascribe to the same goal to identify workplace hazards and prevent incident recurrence. The goal of incident reporting is not apparent, and the path to achieving the goal is obstructed by internal and external hazards that act to oppose the reporting process, such that the goals are obscured by competing priorities. The general qualitative method was applied to a nonrandom snowball sampling technique to recruit eight participants. Over 176 years of combined experience across aircraft maintenance and petrochemical operations are represented. Participants were removed from either industry within the last five years. Each participant experienced multiple near miss incident events in the past. At the time an incident occurs, the compelling individual need that exists is explained in terms of Abraham Maslow’s (1943) theory of motivation. The Process- Practice-Purpose principle is developed and used to demonstrate the association between activities (the “what”) that occur within workspaces and customary practices (the “how”) that develop in the course of realizing the incident reporting goal. Three recurring themes support the findings: (a) The motivation to report, (b) Beliefs about reporting, and (c) The purpose of 7 reporting over time. Together, the themes form the three-legged stool of the incident reporting perception. Any leg missing renders the stool out of balance. Hazards are identified in terms of personal safety. The near miss definition is expressed in terms of individual perspective and is guided by experience, personality, knowledge, and personal agency to take action. The goal of reporting is explained in terms of benefit to people, the process, and practice. Alignment with the OHSA goal is evaluated by examining the motivation to report, beliefs about reporting, and the purpose of reporting over time. The Principle of Understanding partnership model is developed to engage the worker and the organization in active learning from near miss incidents through awareness and knowledge about the cumulative utility of near miss data, perceptions of incident severity, and optimizing communication.

No description available.

Spanning forty years apart, the short story “Miss Sophia’s Diary” (1926) by Ding Ling and The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath can speak to one another in revealing the position of women in a revolutionary new era. The two stories may be generationally and geographically distant, yet both hold a collective female consciousness in the context of the emerging modernist epoch. By examining these two pieces of literature in relation to one another, similar attitudes and stylistic trends emerge regarding the treatment of women. The common archetypes, for each respective time and country, imprinted onto women are at some points accepted but also rejected in these two female-focused stories. In disregarding many of the traits associated with the modern woman, Ling and Plath mold a unique feminine persona to capture the essence of what a true woman can and should be. Not only does the likeness of the works contribute in establishing a global feminist ideal, it is in the differences where cultural and generational attitudes can be investigated. What the pillar of feminism represented in early 1920s China differs significantly from 1950s United States of America. Though these differences can be signs of progression for woman’s rights, there are many of the same anxieties surrounding women that have lingered on for decades. This thesis will conduct a comparative study on how the “Miss Sophia’s Diary” and The Bell Jar posses the unique variations of the modern woman. Furthermore, with the use of a web-based corpus analysis program, this thesis sets out to probe selections from both works linguistically. Doing so will uphold a clearer image as to each texts’ word associations when discussing women and can further reveal how the construction of each female persona compares to one another. Overall, this thesis dismantles borders of both time and space to expose the true meaning behind the modern woman’s role in a largely demeaning and patriarchal world.

Conventional on-chip (L1) data caches such as Direct-Mapped (DM) and 2-way Set-Associative Caches (SAC) have been widely used for high-performance uni (or multi)-processors. Unfortunately, these schemes suffer from high conflict misses since more than one address is mapped onto the same cache line. To reduce the conflict misses, much research has been done in developing different cache architectures such as 2-way Skewed-Associative cache (Skew cache). The 2-way Skew cache has a hardware complexity equivalent to that of 2-way SAC and has a miss-rate approaching that of 4-way SAC. However, the reduction in the miss-rate using a Skew cache is limited by the confined space available to disperse the conflicting accesses over small memory banks. This research proposes a dual-port data cache called Pseudo-Direct Cache (PDC) to minimize the conflict misses by dispersing addresses effectively over a single memory bank. Our simulation results show that PDC reduces those misses significantly compared to any conventional L1 caches and also achieves 10-15% lesser miss-rates than a 2-way Skew cache. SimpleScalar simulator is used for these simulations with SPEC95FP benchmark programs. Similar results were also seen over SPEC2000FP benchmark programs. Simulations over CACTI 3.0 were performed to evaluate the hardware implications of PDC over Skew cache. The simulation results show that the PDC has a simple hardware complexity similar to 2-way SAC and has 4-15% better AMAT compared to 2-way Skew cache. The PDC also reduces execution cycles significantly.

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No description available.

In this study, the goal is to optimize the process and to reduce the clogging tendency during the continuous casting process. The focus is on clogging when the refractory base material (RBM) in the SEN is in contact with the liquid steel. It is difficult or impossible to avoid non-metallic inclusions in the liquid steel, but by a selection of a good RBM in the SEN clogging can be reduced.   Different process steps were evaluated during the casting process in order to reduce the clogging tendency. First, the preheating of the SEN was studied. The results showed that the SEN can be decarburized during the preheating process. In addition, decarburization of SEN causes a larger risk for clogging. Two types of plasma coatings were implemented to protect the RBM, to prevent reactions with the RBM, and to reduce the clogging tendency. Calcium titanate (CaTiO3) mixed with yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) plasma coatings were tested in laboratory and pilot plant trials, for casting of aluminium-killed low-carbon steels. For casting of cerium alloyed stainless steels, YSZ plasma coatings were tested in laboratory, pilot plant and industrial trials. The results showed that the clogging tendency was reduced when implementing both coating materials.   It is also of importance to produce clean steel in order to reduce clogging. Therefore, the steel cleanliness in the tundish was studied experimentally. The result showed that inclusions originated from the slag, deoxidation products and tundish refractory and that they were present in the tundish as well as in the final steel product. / <p>QC 20170227</p> / VINNOVA

"The purpose of this study was to determine the differences, if any, between seventeen foster families who indicated a financial reason as a factor in offering their service to provide family care to neuropsychiatric patients, and nineteen families who stated non-financial reasons, but who were also providing family care to mentally ill patients. The focus of the analysis of the data collected for these thirty-six foster families was to ascertain which of the twenty-two items significantly differentiated the families when dichotomized by financial reason and cross-tabulated on these selected items"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "January, 1961." / "Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work." / Advisor: Dorothy D. Hayes, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references.