Division of Policy Research and Analysis, National Science Foundation under Grant no. OEP 76-00284

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Department of Music, Stanford University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-188).

A small percentage of wheelchair users are unable to transfer from their wheelchair to a vehicle during transportation. Reasons for an occupant to remain in the wheelchair during transport may be the inability to safely transfer to a vehicle seat, the occupant's requirement of a specialist postural management wheelchair seating system or reliance on life support equipment attached to the wheelchair. The Rehabilitation Engineering Unit at Rookwood Hospital deal with people who require either a specialist postural support wheelchair seating system, life support equipment or both. To cater for such equipment the wheelchairs have to be modified to some degree and sometimes completely custom made. In performing modifications to the wheelchairs the Rehabilitation Engineering Unit take on the manufactures responsibilities, one of which is to ensure that the wheelchair is safe for use in transport. Standard crash tests for production wheelchairs are destructive so are impractical to use for bespoke wheelchair designs meaning that the Clinical Engineers at the Hospital have to rely on their best engineering judgement as to whether a wheelchair design is crash worthy or not. It was proposed that by using computer crash simulation techniques an informed judgement of the crashworthiness of the bespoke wheelchair designs could be attained. A series of computer models of occupied wheelchairs were created and validated against physical crash data performed on surrogate wheelchairs. These validated wheelchair computer models were then used to examine a series of different crash scenarios that provided the Clinical Engineers at Rookwood hospital with an informed process for virtually assessing the crashworthiness of their wheelchair designs. The validation results showed that the wheelchair crashworthiness could feasibly be predicted by computer simulation. This thesis concluded that attaching equipment to the wheelchair can increase both its horizontal displacement and the forces on the tiedowns securing the wheelchair to the vehicle chassis. Skewed impact simulations also highlighted the poor lateral restraint ability of the 4-point webbing tie-down system and also the importance of sufficient lateral support on the wheelchair for occupant protection.

No description available.

Irrespective of all the efforts made by the Department of Labour (DoL) and other relevant stakeholders to improve the performance of Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) in construction. In the Construction Industry, there is still a very high level of accidents and fatalities in South Africa. Injuries and accidents to workers do not help a community in any nation. The construction industry in South Africa is generally known to be one of the most hazardous and has one of the most dismal OH&S records among all industrial segments with an unacceptably high level of injuries and fatalities resulting in considerable human suffering. A doctoral study was recently conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness and performance of the DoL OH&S Inspectorate in South Africa. The empirical study was conducted among a range of stakeholders: civil engineering and building contractors; OH&S consultants; project managers; DoL inspectors; and designers by means of a questionnaire survey. The methodology adopted in this study included the exploratory and descriptive methods, which entails the technique of observation including the use of questionnaires and data analysis. The salient findings of the study are presented and elucidate that the DoL OH&S Inspectorate is not effective in terms of OH&S relative to the construction industry in South Africa. Conclusions and recommendations included expound that the DoL OH&S Inspectorate is not effectively conducting their duties reinforcing the need for a reviewed OH&S Inspectorate model framework. The proposed structured normative model consists of fundamental elements which would improve the effectiveness of the DoL OH&S Inspectorate. The findings of the study with recommendations are included.

Grid computing technologies facilitate complex scientific collaborations between globally dispersed parties, which make use of heterogeneous technologies and computing systems. However, in recent years the commercial sector has developed a growing interest in Grid technologies. Prominent Grid researchers have predicted Grids will grow into the commercial mainstream, even though its origins were in scientific research. This is much the same way as the Internet started as a vehicle for research collaboration between universities and government institutions, and grew into a technology with large commercial applications. Grids facilitate complex trust relationships between globally dispersed business partners, research groups, and non-profit organizations. Almost any dispersed “virtual organization” willing to share computing resources can make use of Grid technologies. Grid computing facilitates the networking of shared services; the inter-connection of a potentially unlimited number of computing resources within a “Grid” is possible. Grid technologies leverage a range of open standards and technologies to provide interoperability between heterogeneous computing systems. Newer Grids build on key capabilities of Web-Service technologies to provide easy and dynamic publishing and discovery of Grid resources. Due to the inter-organisational nature of Grid systems, there is a need to provide adequate security to Grid users and to Grid resources. This research proposes a framework, using a specific brokered pattern, which addresses several common Grid security challenges, which include: Providing secure and consistent cross-site Authentication and Authorization; Single-sign on capabilities to Grid users; Abstract iii; Underlying platform and runtime security, and; Grid network communications and messaging security. These Grid security challenges can be viewed as comprising two (proposed) logical layers of a Grid. These layers are: a Common Grid Layer (higher level Grid interactions), and a Local Resource Layer (Lower level technology security concerns). This research is concerned with providing a generic and holistic security framework to secure both layers. This research makes extensive use of STRIDE - an acronym for Microsoft approach to addressing security threats - as part of a holistic Grid security framework. STRIDE and key Grid related standards, such as Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA), Web-Service Resource Framework (WS-RF), and the Globus Toolkit are used to formulate the proposed framework.

For integration between application-systems in a global context, interoperability needs to be established on a global level; global interoperability, in turn, is based on a global common application-interface. This is achieved through resolving differences in, inter alia, protocol profiles, among participants in the global network. ebXML is used as the point of departure. A messaging framework, which is based on existing Web technology and standards, is proposed. Certain security and Web service standards are examined to determine specific parameters for an interoperable secure messaging environment. A security based framework comprising a predefined message format and architecture is investigated for a secure interoperable global electronic marketspace.

In today’s world, information and the associated Information Technology are critical assets for many organizations. Any information security breach, or compromise of these assets, can lead to serious implications for organizations that are heavily dependent on these assets. For such organizations, information security becomes vital. Organizations deploy an information security infrastructure for protecting their information assets. This infrastructure consists of policies and controls. Organizations also create an information security management system for managing information security in the organization. While some of the policies and controls are of a purely technical nature, many depend upon the actions of end-users. However, end-users are known to exhibit both compliant and noncompliant behaviours in respect of these information security policies and controls in the organization. Non-compliant information security behaviours of end-users have the potential to lead to information security breaches. Non-compliance thus needs to be controlled. The discipline of information security and its management have evolved over the years. However, the discipline has retained the technology-driven nature of its origin. In this context, the discipline has failed to adequately appreciate the role played by the end-users and the complexities of their behaviour, as it relates to information security policies and controls. The pervasive information security management philosophy is that of treating end-users as the enemy. Compliance is sought to be achieved through awareness programs, rewards, punishments and evermore strict policies and controls. This has led to a bureaucratic information security management approach. The philosophy of treating end-users as the enemy has had an adverse impact on information security in the organization. It can be said that rather than curbing non-compliance by end-users, the present-day bureaucratic approach to information security management has contributed to non-compliance. This thesis calls this the end-user crisis. This research aims at resolving this crisis by identifying an improved approach to information security management in the organization. This research has applied the service management approach to information security management. The resultant Information Security Service Management (ISSM) views end-users as assets and resources, and not as enemies. The central idea of ISSM is that the end-user is to be treated as a customer, whose needs are to be satisfied. This research presents ISSM. This research also presents the various components of ISSM to aid in its implementation in an organization.

M.Comm. / The principal aim of the present dissertation is to determine the nature of an electronicbanking environment, to determine the threats within such an environment and the security functionality needed to ward off these threats. Security solutions for each area at risk will be provided in short. The main focus of the dissertation will fall on the security protocols that can be used as solutions to protect a banking system. In the dissertation, indication will also be given of what the security protocols, in their turn, depend on to provide protection to a banking system. There are several security protocols that can be used to secure a banking system. The problem, however, is to determine which protocol will provide the best security for a bank in a specific application. This dissertation is also aimed at providing a general security framework that banks could use to evaluate various security protocols which could be implemented to secure a banking system. Such framework should indicate which security protocols will provide a bank in a certain banking environment with the best protection against security threats. It should also indicate which protocols could be used in combination with others to provide the best security.

The European Union (EU) market is important for South African citrus exporters; however, the increase in non-tariff measures (NTMs), such as SPS requirements by the EU, to some extent may have an impact on South African citrus export to the EU. For an instance, the EU adopted stricter regulations in 2013 on the number of Citrus Black Spot (CBS) interceptions, setting them at a maximum number of five, as opposed to thirty-six that were found in South African citrus exports in 2012. The adoption of such NTMs constitutes a greater challenge for South African exporters, who are required incur greater cost in complying with higher standards. South Africa has normally associated some of the NTMs imposed by the EU on citrus from South Africa, such as CBS regulations, with the internal interests of some citrus-producing European countries. The United Kingdom (UK), after Brexit and being outside the EU, may no longer be constrained by such EU interests. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the potential impact of NTMs imposed by the EU on South African citrus exports to the UK. To evaluate the impact of EU NTMs on South Africa citrus, a database of NTMs was developed. Citrus products classified at HS 6-digit level exported by South Africa to the EU were included in the database. The descriptive analysis has shown evidence that, overall, the number of NTMs applied on citrus exports from South African by the EU escalated from 25 in 1988 to 1 829 in 2018. This increase in the number of NTMs coincided with a decline in the tariffs. Inventory analysis results revealed that, because the UK is a member of the EU, and even though the UK does not have citrus production, South African citrus exports to the UK faced 3.9%–16% more SPS measures than they would have if the UK was not part of the EU. Furthermore, South Africa would have faced 10%–20% more TBT measures than they would have if UK was not part of the EU. It was also found that South Africa would have faced 33%–390% more of other types of NTMs than they would have if the UK was not part of the EU. The econometric analysis revealed that South African oranges and mandarins exports are mostly affected by SPS measures, rather than any other NTM category, and their impact is higher in the rest of the EU than in the UK. The difference of -0.001 and -0.009, which is obtained by subtracting the value of the NTM (SPS) coefficient for exports to the rest of the EU and that of the UK for oranges and mandarins, respectively, represents the margin by which South African exports to the UK unnecessarily suffer for SPS measures. The results also revealed that TBT measures only affected South African oranges and mandarins exports to the rest of the EU and not to the UK. The other NTMs had no significant impact on both exports to the rest of the EU and the UK. Furthermore, tariffs had no significant impact on all citrus categories exported to the rest of the EU and the UK, across all NTM categories. One of the important findings of the study is that the impact of SPS measures is the highest in the rest of the EU as compared with UK and that TBT measures had no negative effect on citrus exports to the UK. This implies that because there are no commercial citrus orchards in the UK, citrus exporters that were likely excluded to UK when it was still under EU will likely benefit if regulations related to pests, plant health (including CBS), plant protection and territory protection are eliminated or reduced. Therefore, this study recommend that South African trade policy makers should prioritise negotiations for the reduction or removal of some of these measures that do not apply to the UK due to the absence of commercial orchards in the UK. Furthermore, the study recommends that South African citrus producers should focus on exporting more amounts of citrus to the UK, and export less to the rest of the EU since exports to UK are not affected by TBT measures. / Dissertation (MSc (Agric) (Agricultural Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / MSc (Agric) (Agricultural Economics) / Unrestricted