South Africa, being a multicultural society, is faced with unique and unusual circumstances that can influence the interaction between their work and personal lives. However, countries can vary noticeably in cultural norms, values and gender-role beliefs, which can lead to the different experience of work-life interaction. Because of these differences, South African workers could experience the interaction between work and home in different ways, and this interaction may manifest differently in various socio-demographic groups. This makes it difficult to develop strategies and intervention programmes that will help workers integrate their work and personal lives more effectively. The general objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and four dimensions of work-home interaction and to establish which socio-demographic characteristics best predict work-home interaction amongst South African employees. A sample (n = 2040) was taken from four industries in South Africa (i.e. police service, the earthmoving equipment industry, mining and nursing). A socio-demographic questionnaire and the 'Survey Work-Home Interaction - Nijmegen' (SWING) were used. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha coefficients, Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that robust predictors included occupation, gender and language for negative work-home interference (WHI), occupation, language and age for positive WHI, language and occupation for negative home-work interference (HWI) and language, occupation, age and education for positive HWI. Recommendations were made for organisations and for future research. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

The Soviet Union occupied her southern neighbor Afghanistan on Thursday, December 27, 1979. Soon after the occupation, significant impacts were felt on agriculture and other sectors of the economy. Agriculture was affected in many ways from the integrity of irrigation systems to the cultivation of opium poppies. Agricultural extension, as the main department within the Ministry of Agriculture, was severely affected in terms of programs, organization, personnel, budget, methods, relations with farmers, and transfer of improved technologies. This study was designed to assess the impacts of the occupation and identify recommendations for the future development of the system. A survey design was used. Sixty-two Afghans with detailed knowledge about the Soviet occupation and agriculture participated in the study. The survey included 34 mostly open-ended questions, covering three areas: demographic characteristics of respondents, impacts of the occupation, and prospects for the future of the Agricultural Extension System of Afghanistan. The majority of participants were highly educated and lived in North America after departing Afghanistan. The results also showed that during the occupation many participants were assigned to passive positions or lost their jobs. The occupation affected the attitudes of the farmers, reduced the cultivation of agricultural land, destroyed the infrastructure for delivering agricultural services, altered the types of crops grown and reduced the number of people working in agriculture. Millions of landmines remain a serious threat to those who return to farming. Recommendations are made for the Government, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Higher and Vocational Education, Agricultural Extension System, Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), and International Aid Agencies. Agricultural extension rehabilitation should be given high priority to meet the emerging challenges of increasing agricultural production by adopting modern technology, generating suitable marketing channels for surplus agricultural products, providing equal development and working opportunities for Afghan women, protecting natural resources, utilizing professional returnees, and replacing poppy cultivation with regular food crops. Perceptual and structural obstacles may militate against providing proper support for agricultural development in Afghanistan. The overall reconstruction and development of the Afghan Agricultural Extension System is a prerequisite for the future development of the Afghan agriculture sector. Establishing a stable Afghan government and support from the international coalition are essential to rebuilding this important sector of the economy.

This study focuses on the British wives of civil servants and army officers who lived in India from 1857 to 1939 to examine the translation of feminine discourses of bourgeois domesticity over imperial space. Three questions form the subject of this research. First, how were cultures of domesticity and imperialism intertwined in complex and often contradicatory ways over space? Second, did imperial rule, and the travel that it necessarily implied, challenge or reinforce the claim that 'there's no place like home'? Third, how and why were places both like and yet unlike 'home' produced by British women living in India? I start by examining the 'mutiny' of 1857-1858 as a period of domestic and imperial crisis, focusing on representations of and by British women at Cawnpore and Lucknow. Then, considering the place of British women in the post-'mutiny' reconstruction of imperial domesticity in India, I focus on two scales: first, home and empire-making on a household scale; and, second, seasonal travels by British women to hill stations in North India. In their travels both to and within India, British women embodied contested discourses of imperial domesticity. Throughout, I focus on the mobile, embodied subjectivities of memsahibs. While imperial histories have often neglected the roles played by British women in India, revisionist accounts have often reproduced stereotypical and / or celebratory accounts of memsahibs. In contrast, I examine the ambivalent basis of imperial and gendered stereotypes and conceptualise spatialised subjectivities in terms of embodiment, critical mobility, and material performativity. As members of an official elite, the British wives of civil servants and army officers came to embody many of the connections and tensions between domesticity and imperialism. Both during and after the 'mutiny,' the place of British women and British homes in India was contested. The place of British women and British homes in India reveal contradictions at the heart of imperial rule by reproducing and yet destabilizing imperial rule on a domestic scale

Le changement d'occupation des sols contaminés est susceptible de modifier la nature et la quantité des matières organiques du sol (MOS). Les matières organiques sont connues pour avoir un rôle de source trophique pour les organismes des sols et un rôle de ligand vis-à-vis des éléments traces métalliques (ETM) dans les sols contaminés. Des changements de matières organiques dus aux changements d'occupation des sols contaminés peuvent modifier la spéciation des ETM et leur disponibilité. Mais dans ce cas, le rôle de la matière organique dans le déterminisme de la disponibilité des ETM est peu documenté. L'objectif du travail présenté dans cette thèse était de mettre en évidence le rôle des matières organiques dans la disponibilité des ETM, dans le cas de sols agricoles contaminés après un changement de cultures annuelles vers des cultures pérennes à vocation non-alimentaire. Le travail a concerné l'étude de la disponibilité du Cu, Pb, Zn et Cd dans les sols de deux sites différents en texture et en origine de pollution i.e. le site de Metaleurop (Nord de la France) avec des sols limoneux contaminés par des retombées atmosphériques et le site de Pierrelaye (Région Parisienne) avec des sols sableux contaminés par les apports d'eaux usées brutes de la ville de Paris. Le rôle de la matière organique a été étudié en travaillant 1) sur des échantillons de sols sous deux cultures différentes i.e. sous culture annuelle et culture pérenne à vocation énergétique miscanthus depuis trois ans, 2) sur les échantillons de sol avant et après incubation in vitro afin d'accélérer la minéralisation de la matière organique, et 3) sur des échantillons de sol avec et sans matières organiques particulaires (MOP) i.e. les fractions libres des MOS afin de mettre en évidence leur rôle spécifique. Une approche combinée d'évaluation de la disponibilité par des extractions chimiques des ETM et d'étude de la localisation des ETM dans des fractions granulométriques a été utilisée. Les résultats obtenus montrent que l'impact de l'occupation des sols (sous culture annuelle ou pérenne miscanthus) sur la disponibilité des ETM était différent pour les deux sites étudiés. Pour les sols du site de Metaleurop les résultats ont montré que la disponibilité de Cu et Pb diminuait sous miscanthus tandis qu'une augmentation de leur localisation dans les fractions fines était observée. Par contre aucun changement n'a été observé pour Zn ni Cd dans ce site. Au contraire pour les sols sableux riches en matières organiques de Pierrelaye le changement d'occupation a impacté la disponibilité de Zn et Cd tandis que celle de Pb et Cu n'a pas évolué. Les résultats des sols avant et après incubation montrent que l'impact de la minéralisation des MOS sur la disponibilité des ETM était site dépendant pour Pb et Cd alors que l'effet sur Cu et Zn était similaire pour les sols des deux sites. En travaillant sur les sols avec et sans MOP, nous avons pu observer que les MOP en tant que fraction organique libre participaient à la disponibilité des ETM telle qu'étudiée, et que une partie du cuivre lié aux MOP était disponible pour un organisme dans nos conditions. Ces résultats de disponibilités des ETM dans des sols qui varient avec la nature et la quantité des matières organiques sont discutés.

Cette recherche s'intéresse aux actions collectives des femmes dans la ville. Elle se penche sur les pratiques de Brésiliennes qui occupent depuis cinq ans déjà un édifice public désaffecté dans le centre-ville de Rio de Janeiro au Brésil. Cette lutte s'inscrit au sein du Movimento nacional da luta pela moradia (Mouvement national de lutte pour logement : MNLM). Notre étude interroge la portée de cette action en matière d'empowerment, de citoyenneté locale et de Droit à la ville chez des femmes reléguées à être marginalisées sur les plans sociaux, économiques et politiques. Nous posons comme hypothèse que ces pratiques collectives peuvent contribuer à l'empowerment individuel et collectif des participantes de même qu'elles constituent un levier vers l'affirmation d'une citoyenneté locale. Nous croyons que cette lutte urbaine est une revendication de leur Droit à la ville et par là une possibilité de revoir les rapports sociaux de sexe dans la ville. Cette recherche se situe dans le cadre théorique de la géographie féministe ce qui nous permet de voir que les rapports sociaux de sexes structurent la ville de même qu'ils donnent lieu à des expériences urbaines sexuées. Notre démarche méthodologique repose sur une observation participante accomplie de septembre 2010 à janvier 2011 où nous avons participé aux activités de l'occupation et partagé le quotidien de ces femmes. Également, quinze entretiens semi-dirigés auprès d'habitantes et trois auprès de leaders du comité de coordination de l'occupation ont été menés. Notre étude dévoile que l'acte d'occupation et l'engagement politique et social qui en découlent, ont transformé la vie de ces femmes. Non seulement elles ont pris conscience de leurs droits, mais elles les ont manifestés tant dans l'espace public que dans l'espace privé. L'occupation Manoel Congo apparaît comme une école de citoyenneté locale où la construction d'un sujet politique femme semble possible. Enfin, animées par des enjeux qui touchent leur quotidien comme femmes et citadines, ces dernières transforment la ville et se l'approprient d'où une lecture sexuée de la réalité urbaine prend tout son sens. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : femmes et ville, géographie féministe, Droit à la ville, lutte urbaine, Rio de Janeiro, femmes et logement, occupation d'un édifice public.

Following the introduction of the discounted penalty function by Gerber and Shiu (1998), significant progress has been made on the analysis of various ruin-related quantities in risk theory. As we know, the discounted penalty function not only provides a systematic platform to jointly analyze various quantities of interest, but also offers the convenience to extract key pieces of information from a risk management perspective. For example, by eliminating the penalty function, the Gerber-Shiu function becomes the Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the time to ruin, inversion of which results in a series expansion for the associated density of the time to ruin (see, e.g., Dickson and Willmot (2005)). In this thesis, we propose to analyze the long-standing finite-time ruin problem by incorporating the number of claims until ruin into the Gerber-Shiu analysis. As will be seen in Chapter 2, many nice analytic properties of the original Gerber-Shiu function are preserved by this generalized analytic tool. For instance, the Gerber-Shiu function still satisfies a defective renewal equation and can be generally expressed in terms of some roots of Lundberg's generalized equation in the Sparre Andersen risk model. In this thesis, we propose not only to unify previous methodologies on the study of the density of the time to ruin through the use of Lagrange's expansion theorem, but also to provide insight into the nature of the series expansion by identifying the probabilistic contribution of each term in the expansion through analysis involving the distribution of the number of claims until ruin. In Chapter 3, we study the joint generalized density of the time to ruin and the number of claims until ruin in the classical compound Poisson risk model. We also utilize an alternative approach to obtain the density of the time to ruin based on the Lagrange inversion technique introduced by Dickson and Willmot (2005). In Chapter 4, relying on the Lagrange expansion theorem for analytic inversion, the joint density of the time to ruin, the surplus immediately before ruin and the number of claims until ruin is examined in the Sparre Andersen risk model with exponential claim sizes and arbitrary interclaim times. To our knowledge, existing results on the finite-time ruin problem in the Sparre Andersen risk model typically involve an exponential assumption on either the interclaim times or the claim sizes (see, e.g., Borovkov and Dickson (2008)). Among the few exceptions, we mention Dickson and Li (2010, 2012) who analyzed the density of the time to ruin for Erlang-n interclaim times. In Chapter 5, we propose a significant breakthrough by utilizing the multivariate version of Lagrange's expansion theorem to obtain a series expansion for the density of the time to ruin under a more general distribution assumption, namely when interclaim times are distributed as a combination of n exponentials. It is worth emphasizing that this technique can also be applied to other areas of applied probability. For instance, the proposed methodology can be used to obtain the distribution of some first passage times for particular stochastic processes. As an illustration, the duration of a busy period in a queueing risk model will be examined. Interestingly, the proposed technique can also be used to analyze some first passage times for the compound Poisson processes with diffusion. In Chapter 6, we propose an extension to Kendall's identity (see, e.g., Kendall (1957)) by further examining the distribution of the number of jumps before the first passage time. We show that the main result is particularly relevant to enhance our understanding of some problems of interest, such as the finite-time ruin probability of a dual compound Poisson risk model with diffusion and pricing barrier options issued on an insurer's stock price. Another closely related quantity of interest is the so-called occupation times of the surplus process below zero (also referred to as the duration of negative surplus, see, e.g., Egidio dos Reis (1993)) or in a certain interval (see, e.g., Kolkovska et al. (2005)). Occupation times have been widely used as a contingent characteristic to develop advanced derivatives in financial mathematics. In risk theory, it can be used as an important risk management tool to examine the overall health of an insurer's business. The main subject matter of Chapter 7 is to extend the analysis of occupation times to a class of renewal risk processes. We provide explicit expressions for the duration of negative surplus and the double-barrier occupation time in terms of their Laplace-Stieltjes transform. In the process, we revisit occupation times in the content of the classical compound Poisson risk model and examine some results proposed by Kolkovska et al. (2005). Finally, some concluding remarks and discussion of future research are made in Chapter 8.

This qualitative study explored and described the lived experience of people with brain injuries with regard to resuming their worker roles. Based on the results, an occupational therapy practice model to facilitate return to work was developed. The theoretical framework of occupational science with emphasis on occupational risk factors informed the study. The research design was a theory generative design based on a qualitative, phenomenological, explorative and descriptive research approach utilizing the methods of theory generation as advocated by Chinn and Kramer (1999), Walker and Avant (2005) and Dickoff, James and Wiedenbach (1968).

No description available.

The French government under Philippe Petain, based at Vichy, simultaneously collaborated with the Germans and promoted French patriotism. French artists and designers produced an abundance of posters, paintings, sculptures and other objets d'art, examples of which are included here, to promote the values of the "new order." Although Christian symbols were common, fascist symbols among the mass-produced images support the idea that the Vichy regime was not merely authoritarian, but parafascist. / The fine arts were purged of "foreign" influences, yet the German Arno Breker was invited to exhibit his sculptures in Paris. In the spirit of national redressement, traditional French art was promoted; however, Modern art, which Hitler condemned as cultural Bolshevism, continued to be produced. With reference to the words of Petain, Hitler, French artists and art critics, and a variety of artworks, this thesis shows how art was used to propagate the ideology of the Vichy regime.

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil