The pediatric audiology landscape changed dramatically with the advances in screening and diagnostic procedures, amplification possibilities and early identification outcomes. Pediatricians play a key role in this rapidly developing field. The aim of this study was to investigate Pediatricians’ knowledge and attitudes regarding the diagnosis and intervention of infants and children with a sensorineural hearing loss. A questionnaire was compiled to obtain the relevant empirical data. This was distributed to 257 pediatricians in the Gauteng Province. Of the 257 questionnaires only 47 could be utilised. According to the results obtained from the pediatricians it appears that the respondents possess adequate knowledge regarding the diagnosis and intervention of infants and children with sensorineural hearing loss. This is despite having received limited or no information and training on this subject. As is discussed in Chapter 4 it became evident that knowledge gaps were found to exist. The pediatrician is an important team member of the hearing intervention team. Their involvement is crucial and their referral can be the important stepping-stone for early identification and intervention. A lack of skills and proficient knowledge is a major constraint during the implementation of efficient primary health care services in developing countries. Throughout the results of this study, it is found that pediatricians have a need for additional information and training in the intervention process of infants and children with sensorineural hearing loss, therefore showing a positive attitude towards continuous education. This is based on the results found throughout the study, in terms of a void in certain areas surrounding effective intervention of hearing loss. The aim of the study was to highlight areas of uncertainty that the respondents might experience and to provide educational programmes in order to equip them with the relevant knowledge with regards to sensorineural hearing loss. The findings of this study would hopefully encourage future research and a more in-depth study regarding this topic. / Dissertation (M (Communication Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / Unrestricted

The main aim of the study was (1) to identify errors committed by learners in financial mathematics and (2) to understand why learners continue to make such errors so that mechanisms to avoid such errors could be devised. The following has been hypothesised; (1) errors committed by learners are not impact upon by language difficulties, (2) errors committed by learners in financial mathematics are not due to prerequisite skills, facts and concepts, (3) errors committed by learners in financial mathematics are not due to the application of irrelevant rules and strategies. Having used Polya’s problem-solving techniques, Threshold Concept and Newman’s Error Analysis as the theoretical frameworks for the study, a four-point Likert scale and three content-based structured-interview questionnaires were developed to address the research questions. The study was conducted by means of a case study guided by the positivists’ paradigm where the research sample comprised of 105 Grade-10 Mathematics Literacy learners as respondents. Four sets of structured-interview questionnaires were used for collecting data, aimed at addressing the main objective of the study. In order to test the reliability and consistency of the questionnaires for this study, Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated for standardised items (α = 0.705). Content analysis and correlation analysis were employed to analyse the data. The three hypotheses of this study were tested using the ANOVA test and hence revealed that, (1) errors committed by learners in financial mathematics are not due to language difficulties, as all the variables illustrated a statistical non-significance (2) errors committed by learners in financial mathematics are not due to prerequisite skills, facts and concepts, as the majority of the variables showed non-significance and (3) errors committed by learners in financial mathematics were due to the application of irrelevant rules and strategies, as 66.7% of the variables illustrated a statistical significance to the related research question.

The thesis deals with rules for right reporting of revenues, which result from International accounting standard IAS 18 -- Revenue. There is briefly characterized the harmonization of financial reporting in the introduction. After that follows the development and the history of IFRS. The third part contains the analysis of the standard IAS 18 -- Revenue and standard IAS 11 -- Construction contracts, including three according interpretations. The final section is focused on the research of ten annual reports with a view to explain the observance of IFRS standards in pracitice.

This work is focused on an analysis of current programming period 2007 -- 2013. The objective is to provide an operational programme overview, both their specifics and survey. Special attention is paid to Regional Operational Programme NUTS 2 Central Bohemia. In the practical part there are summarised (following the research) the results of the absorption capacity of the region and the function of euromanagers. In conclusion there is an analysis of a succesful project in Central Bohemia, carried out through Common Regional Operational Programme from the last programming period.

The main objective of my diploma thesis is to reach the significance of small and medium-sized enterprises and make a statistical analysis of the specific program supporting small and medium-sized enterprises provided by the Czech Moravian Guarantee Bank with the emphasis on the labour market. The analysis indicated that small and medium-sized enterprises are significant players not only in the Czech economy, but also in other states in the world. Small and medium-sized enterprises make 99,23% of the whole business sector in the Czech Republic. They dominate in sectors such as trade, services, fishing, manufacturing and other labour-intensive industries. No less important role small and medium-sized enterprises play in providing jobs, for 59,9% of work force employed in the Czech Republic. Most of empirical studies claim that small and medium-sized enterprises are significant in job creation as well as in job destruction. The certain of jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises are really poor in comparison with the large companies. There are lots of supportive programmes for small and medium-sized enterprises which are concentrated on regional level as well as blanket character. Evaluation of the program supporting small and medium-sized enterprises provided by the Czech Moravian Guarantee Bank confirmed their significance role in job creation and also indicated their small part in job destruction.

Exprimer le parallélisme dans la programmation de manière simple et performante est un défi auquel l'informatique fait face, en raison de l'évolution actuelle des architectures matérielles. BSML est un langage permettant une programmation parallèle de haut niveau, structurée, qui participe à cette recherche. En s'appuyant sur le coeur du langage existant, cette thèse propose d'une part des extensions qui en font un langage plus général et plus simple (traits impératifs tels que références et exceptions, syntaxe spécifique...) tout en conservant et étendant sa sûreté (sémantiques formelles, système de types...) et d'autre part une méthodologie de développement d'applications parallèles certifiées / Finding a good paradigm to represent parallel programming in a simple and efficient way is a challenge currently faced by computer science research, mainly due to the evolution of machine architectures towards multi-core processors. BSML is a high level, structured parallel programming language that takes part in the research in an original way. By building upon existing work, this thesis extends the language and makes it more general, simple and usable with added imperative features such as references and exceptions, a specific syntax, etc. The existing formal and safety characteristics of the language (semantics, type system...) are preserved and extended. A major application is given in the form of a methodology for the development of fully proved parallel programs

Une pression accrue s'exerce sur les compilateurs pour mettre en œuvre des transformations de programmes de plus en plus complexes délivrant le potentiel de performance des processeurs multicœurs et des accélérateurs hétérogènes. L'espace de recherche des optimisations de programmes possibles est gigantesque est manque de structure. La recherche de la meilleure transformation, qui inclut la prédiction des gains estimés de performance offerts par cette transformation, constitue le problème le plus difficiles pour les compilateurs optimisants modernes. Nous avons choisi de nous concentrer sur les transformations de boucles et sur leur automatisation, exprimées dans le modèle polyédrique. Les méthodes d'optimisation de programmes dans le modèle polyédrique se répartissent grossièrement en deux classes. La première repose sur l'optimisation linéaire d'une fonction de analytique de coût. La deuxième classe de méthodes met en œuvre une recherche itérative. La première approche est rapide, mais elle est facilement mise en défaut en ce qui concerne la découverte de la solution optimale. L'approche itérative est plus précise, mais le temps de compilation peut devenir prohibitif. Cette thèse contribue une approche nouvelle de la recherche itérative de transformations de programmes dans le modèle polyédrique. La nouvelle méthode proposée possède la précision et la capacité effective à extraire des transformations profitables des méthodes itératives, tout en en minimisant les faiblesses. Notre approche repose sur l'évaluation systématique d'une fonction de coût et de prédiction de performances non-linéaire. Par ailleurs, la parallélisation automatique dans le modèle polyédrique est actuellement dominée par des outils de compilation source-à-source. Nous avons choisi au contraire d'implémenter nos techniques dans la plateforme GCC, en opérant sur une représentation de code de bas niveau, à trois adresses. Nous montrons que le niveau d'abstraction de la représentation intermédiaire choisie engendre des difficultés de passage à l'échelle, et nous montrons comment les surmonter. À l'inverse, nous montrons qu'une représentation intermédiaire de bas niveau ouvre de nouveaux degrés de liberté, bénéficiant à notre stratégie itérative de recherche de transformations, et à la compilation polyédrique de manière générale. / In order to take the performance advantages of the current multicore and heterogeneous architectures the compilers are required to perform more and more complex program transformations. The search space of the possible program optimizations is huge and unstructured. Selecting the best transformation and predicting the potential performance benefits of that transformation is the major problem in today's optimizing compilers. The promising approach to handling the program optimizations is to focus on the automatic loop optimizations expressed in the polyhedral model. The current approaches for optimizing programs in the polyhedral model broadly fall into two classes. The first class of the methods is based on the linear optimization of the analytical cost function. The second class is based on the exhaustive iterative search. While the first approach is fast, it can easily miss the optimal solution. The iterative approach is more precise, but its running time might be prohibitively expensive. In this thesis we present a novel search-based approach to program transformations in the polyhedral model. The new method combines the benefits - effectiveness and precision - of the current approaches, while it tries to minimize their drawbacks. Our approach is based on enumerating the evaluations of the precise, nonlinear performance predicting cost-function. The current practice is to use the polyhedral model in the context of source-to-source compilers. We have implemented our techniques in a GCC framework that is based on the low level three address code representation. We show that the chosen level of abstraction for the intermediate representation poses scalability challenges, and we show the ways to overcome those problems. On the other hand, it is shown that the low level IR abstraction opens new degrees of freedom that are beneficial for the search-based transformation strategies and for the polyhedral compilation in general.

The goal of this thesis is to identify the challenges and success factors of the support system for innovative start-ups in the Czech Republic as well as to formulate recommendations for the implementation of the currently envisaged Seed fund project. The thesis covers the specifics of start-up companies and barriers for their development and puts them in relation with the current state of the Czech entrepreneurial environment and its innovation performance. Hard data as well as opinions of experts and potential investors are assessed to analyze the needs and motivations of both demand and supply sides of the venture capital market in order to provide some valuable insights which may help the support system to improve the access of entrepreneurs to external finance and boost the creation of innovative start-ups in the Czech Republic. The main suggestions introduced relate to the focus on retaining strict transparency, to the careful selection of entities evaluating the viability of projects and those providing services assisting the entrepreneurs in the preparation phase. Finally, the right setting of conditions of the Seed fund to attract both private investors and entrepreneurs will determine the success of the whole project.

This work deals with customer loyalty and loyalty programmes in areas of buying chemist goods, clothing, footwear and groceries. The main objective of this work is to compare the approach of English and Czech customers to loyalty programmes in these areas. The intention of the analysis is to discover whether the approach to loyalty programmes in these two countries varies and what are the major differences. Does using a loyalty programme really affect customer loyalty? Who are more loyal, Czech or English customers? The aim is also to find out how customers use their loyalty programs, what kind of rewards are the most attractive for them and what personal information are they willing to provide when they sign up for loyalty programmes. The analysis also aims to pose these same questions to multi-brand partnership programmes and also mobile applications. This work can therefore benefit companies operating in both Czech and English markets to adapt their loyalty programs to be most effective.

The main concern of this thesis was to investigate the possibility of implementing a Western Classical music listening programme for teacher training through integrated arts in Early Childhood Development (ECD). The outcome of this thesis suggests that it is possible to train musically untrained teachers at a one-day practical workshop how to introduce young learners in an acceptable and enjoyable way to Western Classical music. At these workshops, teachers had to dress up in homemade fantasy outfits to depict different characters in stories to music which they had to dramatize. The costumes turned the listening activity into a fun-filled experience which ensured the success of the training. The teachers were mostly generalists without any previous specialized music training. These teachers needed knowledge and skills to integrate the arts in the Early Childhood learning programme. In this programme, a selection of Western Classical music pieces is vividly brought to life through storytelling, dramatization, creative dance movements, instrumental play and the visual arts. Example lessons from the proposed listening programme were implemented during a pilot study in Mauritius with Creole and French speaking ECD teachers who were unfamiliar with Western Classical music. It became evident through the main research study that took place in underprivileged areas in Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces in South Africa that most black African teachers were also unfamiliar with this music style. Both the pilot study and the main research showed that the methodology of the proposed listening programme is suitable for the training of ECD teachers from different cultures and language groups. Teachers in remote areas made it their responsibility to look for, find or fabricate resources for costumes they could not afford. It has proved to be an effective method that can be implemented at grass-roots level in underprivileged areas and used as a guideline for the integration of the arts throughout South Africa and other countries. The study concludes with recommendations to implement the proposed listening programme at all primary schools in South Africa. / Thesis (DMus)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Music / DMus / unrestricted