The limits of directional drilling continue to be pushed back as horizontal or near-horizontal reservoir sections are being drilled, cased, cemented and completed to tap reserves at extreme distances. Continuous development of new technology and adopting a technical-limit approach to performance delivery are key elements for the success and further development of extended-reach drilling projects. For this study a two-phase well control simulator was used to evaluate different kick scenarios that are likely to occur in extended-reach wells. An extensive simulation study covering a vide range of variables has been performed. Based on this investigation together with a literature review, well-control procedures have been developed for extended-reach wells. The most important procedures are as follows: Perform a "hard" shut-in when a kick is detected and confirmed. Record the pressures and pit gain, and start to circulate immediately using the Driller's Method. Start circulating with a high kill rate to remove the gas from the horizontal section. Slow down the kill circulation rate to 1/2 to 1/3 of normal drilling rate when the choke pressure starts to increase rapidly. The simulator has been used to validate the procedures.

<p>Due to different engineering background and limited technical prerequisites, trade-offs are needed when managing information in complex product development. The challenges faced with information management for complex product development are as much of organizational as technical character.</p><p>Information management has in this thesis been analyzed from both a technical and organizational dimension in order to obtain an integrated view and holistic understanding. The technical dimension focuses on information management systems, such as product lifecycle management systems. An information management system in itself does not solve problems in an organization; it manages at its best all types of business data while storing and retrieving information. In order to succeed, information management needs to be aligned with different needs and with a variety of domain-specific work procedures. The organizational dimension includes organizational structures, work procedures, and the designer and management perspectives on needs and benefits with information management.</p><p>Perceived benefits with integrated information management are identified as support for SE, work procedure mapping, use of disciplinary support tools, and data integrity and availability. Five technical and organizational key success factors for efficient information management are presented; usability, integration of information, motivation, information structure and organizational support. It is concluded that structured information, management support and motivation among designers are more important than customization of information management systems in order to achieve integrated information management.</p>

Colleges and universities have recently faced several lawsuits brought by parents of students who have committed suicide or made suicide attempts. The lawsuits are based on varying claims, including negligence, breach of contact, and discrimination. In crafting policies to respond to these lawsuits, universities should not simply seek limiting institutional liability but should balance the private interest of their students, the relationship of the school to parents of the students, requirements of due process, and their commitment to antidiscrimination principles. This paper focuses on the current procedural protections in university policies handling students at risk of suicide. I argue that suicidal ideation or attempt should not be treated as if the student has committed a disciplinary infraction, but should be treated as a mental health issue that should therefore not trigger a disciplinary proceeding. However, institutions should not be so quick to dismiss using disciplinary proceedings as a last resort since such a process affords students protections of minimal due process. I propose that the objectives of procedural due process, fairness, preserving the student-institutional relationship, and fact-finding in this situation should include an intermediate mediation step before resorting to disciplinary hearings or involuntary medical withdrawal.

The current New Zealand tax disputes resolution procedures were enacted in 1996 following a recommendation made by the Organisational Review Committee of the Inland Revenue Department in 1994. Yet, following their enactment and despite a number of positive aspects to the disputes resolution procedures, commentators and professional bodies alike have continued to raise concerns that inefficiencies, particularly with respect to time and cost, are affecting their operation and are, consequently, adversely impacting on taxpayers’ perceptions of the fairness of the procedures. It is believed that this is potentially negatively impacting on the tax system and on taxpayer voluntary compliance. Consequently, suggestions have been made for the use of alternative disputes resolution procedures, such as mediation, as another method to resolve tax disputes. The objective of this study is to develop a refined tax mediation regime for New Zealand through improving the features of the proposed tax mediation regime for New Zealand’s tax disputes resolution system first developed by Jone and Maples (2012b). Utilising a sequential mixed methods approach, consisting of a quantitative survey questionnaire followed by a qualitative focus group interview, this study seeks feedback on Jone and Maples’ (2012b) proposed New Zealand tax mediation regime from purposively selected practitioners (experts) in the tax disputes resolution and mediation fields. The feedback obtained is used in refining Jone and Maples’ (2012b) proposed tax mediation regime. This study finds that the most important aspect of the refined proposed regime is the inclusion of a mediator who is independent of both parties and moreover, that the mediator is foremost trained and qualified in mediation as opposed to being a specialist in tax law. The findings also indicate that mediation should not be made a mandatory phase of the disputes procedures. This study recommends that the refined tax mediation regime should be an administrative phase and incorporated with the existing conference phase in a proposed ‘ADR stage’ of the disputes procedures. Notwithstanding the potential budgetary and resource constraints, the findings indicate that if mediation were to be provided as a cost-free service, taxpayers (particularly small taxpayers) should be appreciative of the opportunity to put their cases forward and be heard, even if an agreement has not been reached through mediation. The literature suggests that this should in turn enhance taxpayers’ perceptions of fairness of the disputes procedures and thereby voluntary compliance. This study provides a foundation for the further development of tax mediation in New Zealand.

It cannot be argued that according to the recent Omani law the accused has the right of access to a lawyer at any stage of the criminal proceedings. Nevertheless, it could be argued that the accused at some points may access a lawyer if he has one, otherwise the state is not obliged to offer him one under any circumstances and in any kind of crimes. There is no single rule stating that the accused must be represented by a lawyer even if he is facing capital punishment. Although the Omani law gives the accused the right to have the lawyer that he hired present with him during the investigation in general terms, there are no provisions to ensure that mechanisms are put in place which guarantee the effectiveness of such right. The Omani legislator has followed the approach upon which the presence of the lawyer is permissible, although this does not necessarily apply during the pre-trial stages in all cases. This research argues that, having no right of free access to a lawyer privileges those who are wealthier because such accused have the means to appoint a lawyer from the outset, a capacity that often evades the poorer accused. If the accused cannot afford a lawyer, the state should appoint one for him, grounded in the motivations of the state being concerned with achieving justice. The research addressed the question whether the Omani Law and particularly the Penal Procedures Code succeed in guaranteeing the accused right of access to a lawyer. Moreover, it considered whether the Omani law set the required procedures and safeguards to make all officials in charge of investigations and trials commit to respecting this right at all circumstances. These issues are considered by critically analysing the relevant Omani law and case law as well as looking at other legal frameworks, with special reference to the Egyptian System. This comparison has been provided in order to give a contextual base upon which the practicing of this right within the Omani Procedures Code can be critically analysed. This study found that there is a great deal of reform for the Omani legislator to urgently do in regard to the right of access to a lawyer during all criminal proceedings stages.

This dissertation examines Galen of Pergamon's text On Anatomical Procedures (De anatomicis administrationibus) and considers its audience and purpose. The first chapter presents the audience of the text as Galen perceived it; I use Galen's explicit rhetoric about his readers to paint a picture of his ideal envisioned audience and then measure this against the concrete expectations that he conveys through the explicit and implicit prerequisites he demands of his readers. The second chapter, by contrast, makes strides towards uncovering the actual audience of the work by examining the ramifications of Galen's expectation that his readers will actively participate in the studies he describes; I study the availability of the books, tools, and animals that he expects his audience to be able to purchase, in order to understand the financial and social implications. The third chapter considers the text itself, taking into account the manner and timing of its composition, Galen's linguistic choices vis-à-vis his audience, and the details of his specific directions; I use this analysis to define the nature of the text and how the audience was expected to interact with it, thus necessarily engaging with the norms in ancient medical education and the role that books found there. The fourth and final chapter compares the text to his other anatomical writings, particularly his more descriptive and philosophically oriented treatise, De usu partium, as a final way to determine the purpose of this highly unusual work and its place both in his oeuvre and in its contemporary environment. / The Classics

Logistic mixed effects models are used to determine whether optimal codons associate with two specific properties of the expressed protein: solvent accessibility, aggregation propensity, or evolutionary conservation. Both random components and fixed structures in the models are decided by following certain selection procedures. More models are also developed by considering different factor combinations using the same selection procedure. The results show that evolutionary conservation is the most important factor for predicting for the optimal codon usage for most amino acids; aggregation propensity is also an important factor, and solvent accessibility is the least important factor for most amino acids.The results of this analysis are consistent with the previous literature, provide more straightforward way to study the research question and also more information for the insight relationships. / text

Software bugs are expensive. Recent estimates by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology claim that the cost of software bugs to the US economy alone is approximately 60 billion USD annually. As society becomes increasingly software-dependent, bugs also reduce our productivity and threaten our safety and security. Decreasing these direct and indirect costs represents a significant research challenge as well as an opportunity for businesses. Automatic software bug-finding and verification tools have a potential to completely revolutionize the software engineering industry by improving reliability and decreasing development costs. Since software analysis is in general undecidable, automatic tools have to use various abstractions to make the analysis computationally tractable. Abstraction is a double-edged sword: coarse abstractions, in general, yield easier verification, but also less precise results. This thesis focuses on exploiting the structure of software for abstracting away irrelevant behavior. Programmers tend to organize code into objects and functions, which effectively represent natural abstraction boundaries. Humans use such structural abstractions to simplify their mental models of software and for constructing informal explanations of why a piece of code should work. A natural question to ask is: How can automatic bug-finding tools exploit the same natural abstractions? This thesis offers possible answers. More specifically, I present three novel ways to exploit structure at three different steps of the software analysis process. First, I show how symbolic execution can preserve the data-flow dependencies of the original code while constructing compact symbolic representations of programs. Second, I propose structural abstraction, which exploits the structure preserved by the symbolic execution. Structural abstraction solves a long-standing open problem --- scalable interprocedural path- and context-sensitive program analysis. Finally, I present an automatic tuning approach that exploits the fine-grained structural properties of software (namely, data- and control-dependency) for faster property checking. This novel approach resulted in a 500-fold speedup over the best previous techniques. Automatic tuning not only redefined the limits of automatic software analysis tools, but also has already found its way into other domains (like model checking), demonstrating the generality and applicability of this idea.

Syfte: Beskriva förberedande faktorer vilket kan ha betydelse vid smärtsamma procedurer på barn. Vidare var syftet att granska vilket urval de inkluderade artiklarna använt sig av. Metod: Beskrivande litteraturstudie. Litteraturstudien grundar sig på tjugotvå inkluderade artiklar. Tre stycken artiklar med kvalitativ ansats, sjutton stycken med kvantitativ ansats, samt två med både kvalitativ och kvantitativ ansats. Resultat: Fyra områden vilka kan ha betydelse vid smärtsamma procedurer på barn framkom. Distraktion: ett effektivt verktyg mot oro och ångest. Distraktionen hindrade inte sjuksköterskan vid den smärtsamma proceduren och var kostnadseffektiv. Föräldraroll och coping: Föräldrars stöd var viktigt för uppbyggnad av coping strategier inför och under den smärtsamma proceduren. Sjuksköterskans roll: Förberedelse och hantering av material inför den smärtsamma proceduren har betydelse för att hindra uppkomst av oro hos barnet. Sjuksköterskan ska kunna bemöta barnet utifrån dess kunskapsnivå och ålder. Farmakologisk omvårdnad: Läkemedel visar positiva resultat på smärta. Detta är ett komplement till omvårdnaden. Metodologisk aspekt: Deltagarna till de inkluderade studierna rekryterades via fyra olika urvalsmetoder. Slutsats: Förberedelser av barn inför smärtsamma procedurer inkluderar flera områden. Sjuksköterskans betydande roll inkluderar att ge information till barnet och hjälpa barnet att utveckla coping strategier. Distraktion kan vara ett bra hjälpmedel, lika så farmakologisk omvårdnad. Sjuksköterskan bör kunna se helheten i mötet med barn. / Objective: Describe preparatory factors which can be of importance during painful procedures on children. A further aim was to examine which method of selection the included articles had chosen. Method: Descriptive literature study. The literature study is based on twenty-two included articles. Three articles feature a qualitative design, seventeen a quantitative design, and two were based on a both a qualitative and quantitative design. Results: Four areas of importance which can be of importance during painful procedures on children were established. Distraction: An effective tool to combat worry and anxiety. Distraction did not hinder the nurse during the painful procedure and was cost effective. Parent influence and coping: Parental support was an invaluable tool to developing coping mechanisms while preparing for and undergoing the painful procedure. The role of the nurse: Preparation of the necessary equipment for the painful procedure is of importance to prevent the development of anxiety in the child. The nurse must be able to relate to the child based on the child´s level of understanding and age. Pharmacological nursing: Pharmaceuticals show positive results on pain. This is a complement to the care. Methodological aspect: Participants of the included case studies were chosen by four different methods of selection. Conclusion: Preparation of children for painful procedures includes several areas. The nurse has an important role which includes giving information to the child and helping the child develop coping strategies. Distraction can be a helpful tool as can pharmacological nursing. The nurse must be able to consider all aspects in the treatment of children.

Occupational risk management can be a catalyst in generating superior returns for all stakeholders on a sustainable basis. A number of companies in South Africa have implemented Cardinal Rules of Safety adopted from international companies to ensure the safety of their employees. The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of the cardinal rules on employee safety behaviour implemented at power stations in Mpumalanga. The empirical study was done by using a questionnaire as measuring instrument. The questionnaire was developed from a literature review and contains questions and items relevant to the initial research problem. The questionnaire comprised of five–point Likert scale type questions.The convenience sampling method was applied identifying 90 participants at three different power stations in Mpumalanga taking part in the study. Statistical analysis was performed by the Statistical Consulting Service of the North–West University using SPSS. Cronbach’s alpha co–efficients was used to determine the reliability of the factors. Descriptive statistics (Mean, standard, deviation, were used in the compiling of the profile of the results. While Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient was calculated to identify practically significant associations between variables and factors The research findings suggest that there is practical significant correlation between the factors that were measured. The opinion given by respondents suggests that cardinal rules of safety were implemented, given all the necessary support by management and enforced throughout the organisation. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.