This research is about the problem of identifying key factors for corporate recovery of electric utilities in New Zealand and the Philippines. Its primary objective is to learn from the experiences of three regulated government utilities and one small private distributor that are involved in the three sectors of electricity business in power generation, transmission and distribution. How these firms survived their decline problems, and managed and sustained their turnaround efforts is the focus of this study. The results indicate the importance of change management, leadership, cost reduction and financial control in reversing the decline of these firms. Also underscored are the crucial role of efficiency improvement and achievement of profit together with winning employee commitment and broad stakeholder support in sustaining the recovery effort.These comparative case studies were undertaken at a time when crises and turbulence affected the management and organisation of electricity businesses in the Asia/Pacific region, particularly New Zealand and the Philippines. Electric utilities in both countries are regulated and less vertically integrated than anywhere else in the region. Significant changes to the ownership and control of these firms and their competitive relationships over the past decade have complicated the way strategic problems and issues have to be resolved. In the meantime, threats and pressures from all stakeholders have made the management and operations of these utilities difficult.Thus, a critical review of their specific circumstances and predicaments is in order for similarly affected enterprises to avoid past errors and to replicate only the strategies that may suit them. In this regard, this work contributes to the enrichment of the existing body of knowledge in business policy and strategic management that has been fast evolving during the ++ / nineties in electric utilities around the world.

I am a Latje Latje man born and raised in Mildura. I am a contemporary artist, a dancer and a father. I began dancing with the Latje Latje dance group when I was four. I come from river country. I spent the first six years of my life on the banks of the Murray River. The river runs right through my work. During the course of my Masters, I have been spending time in the north of Victoria, in central Victoria and in South Gippsland by the sea in Boonerwrung country. I a man of the river, but since the birth of my son, I have been developing a relationship with the sea. My relationship to the sea changed when my son moved to the sea. My spiritual connection to the sea has grown the more time I have spent there and the more spiritual knowledge I have gained of my ancestral country of the Boonerwrung. Within this research project, I explore the question: How can art-making generate a process of recovery, healing and celebration? In my Masters I have developed two series of paintings, one from the river and one from the sea. The first group of paintings were shown in a nine-month solo exhibition, 'City Style - Country Youth' at Bunjilaka, the Aboriginal Section of the Melbourne Museum. The second group were shown at another solo exhibition called 'Mungo Stories' held at the Australia Dreaming Art gallery in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Artefacts My Master of Arts includes the following artefacts: • An Exhibition of Paintings selected from the 63 artworks I have undertaken during the course of my Masters • An Exegesis in which I tell the story of my paintings and my research and in which I give an overview of the paintings I have done during my research degree • A Digital Story which combines didgeridoo music with a selection of my images • Two Audio Tracks, 'Paintings Talk' and 'Grinding the Ochre' • A Short Film in which I describe my experience as a contemporary Indigenous artist.

Every business is subject to service failures. The process of correcting these failures and turning disappointed customers back into happy ones is called service recovery. This is particularly important in the hotel business, where there are many moments of truth where customers may become dissatisfied. To further complicate things, service recovery is a process where you may have to correct errors of others - people beyond your control. The research field is relatively new and there are no turn-key solutions as to how to systematically work with service recovery. That is why we study three big hotels with the purpose to compare how they do it. Through a series of interviews with key personnel we conclude that size is a determining factor for the need of systematic service recovery work, and that size does not affect the advantages of working with service recovery systematically.

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) prevail in commercial and first responder applications, the need for safer and more consistent recovery methods is growing. Standard aircraft landing manoeuvres are only possible with a suitable runway which is often unavailable outside of military applications. Alternative recovery approaches can be either contained within the aircraft, ie. parachute or be setup on the ground ie. net landing. By integrating the recovery system into the vehicle, the flight preparation can be streamlined due to the fact that setting up recovering devices is no longer required. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the application of an autonomous vertical landing capability for fixed wing UAVs using articulated motors to enter vertical flight. Using an experimental UAV design, the dynamics of the problem were investigated using recorded flight data. Implementing a decoupled control approach, the aircraft was stabilized to maintain a horizontal hover. Through the characterized plant model that defines the vertical descent behaviour, a control topology was developed and tested in simulation using an optimal control approach. The developed controller was tested on the experimental UAV to verify the vertical landing performance. It was determined that this approach was well suited to autonomous vertical recovery of a fixed wing UAV. In employing this approach to UAV recovery, operators can easily operate in theatres where space for conventional landing does not exist.

Background: In scientific literature there are various treatment programs for people with alcohol dependence described, however, are psychosocial factors that promote recovery process described to a limited extent. Purpose: To describe the psychosocial factors that promotes recovery from alcohol dependence. Method: Literature study of ten scientific articles, published between 1999-2011 with both qualitative and quantitative design. Results: According to the literature, the recovery process can be considered to begin when a person with alcohol dependence reached his personal rock bottom. The longer the recovery progresses, the greater are the overall level of performance. Social support is described as an important factor to prevent relapse and reduce the need for professional help. Self-belief and support of self-help groups are described as important to maintaining sobriety. Social support and influence from family members was related to increased ability to analyze and assess their situation during the recovery. Therapeutic alliance and mutual goals are also important factors. Once treatment has been successfully described as a combination of self-motivation and willingness to initiate a radical change in behaviour. Conclusion: Psychosocial factors in the form of supportive relationships appear to promote recovery from alcohol dependence. Other conclusions drawn from this study is limited in scope and compiled by the studies of different design. Further studies need to be implemented in order to draw general conclusions, which can in turn be in support of clinical work.

Aim: In this study, women were interviewed about their experiences of recovering from an eating disorder - The aim has been to investigate the factors that contributed to recovery and with guidance of these factors, find factors that can be used in a preventive intervention. Method : A qualitative approach was used to design and conduct interviews, the design of the study was descriptive and a semistructured interview was used. The local affiliation of The Swedish Eating Disorder Association was contacted and provided contact with 10 women who participated in the interview. To participate in the study the women had to be recovered from their eating disorder for at least two years. The women who patricipated in the study were between 22 and 36 years old and had been recovered for 2- 16 years. Data were analyzed and coded then categories with similar themes about the factors that were important for recovery wad etablished. The various groups were summarized and are then recognized in the results. Results: Various factors have been important for recovery. One outstanding factor was people in their surroundings and people they met in treatment such as therapist, doctors and psychologists. These were persons who contributed to their courage to leave the eating disorders and helped them to better self-esteem, self-respect and hope for the future. Other important factors included the re- finding of their interests and to be their own selves in social contexts. Another important factor was to read literature about eating disorders, and biographies about people who have recovered from eating disorders. The conclusion is that the most important factor in recovering from an eating disorder is a person´s environment and its support. In order to prevent eating disorders, the work in the first place should be given to encourage children and young people´s self esteem

Homogeneous catalysts demonstrate the ability to perform extremely selective organic syntheses with high yields. These catalysts are usually quite expensive and the commercial viability of processes that use homogeneous catalysts depends on the efficiency of catalyst recovery, which is normally quite complex. This obstacle often excludes the use of homogene-ous catalysts from commercial processes. This work investigates the implementation of mem-branes as the unit operation for catalyst recovery as a means to expand the use of homogeneous catalysis. The commercial polyimide, Matrimid, has been examined for its suitability as a membrane material for the homogeneous catalyst recovery of a 1-dodecene hydroformylation reaction, catalyzed by a rhodium-triphenylphosphine transition metal catalyst. This reaction occurs in the liquid phase in solution with toluene. Because of the aggressive environment of the reaction, blends of Matrimid with a crosslinkable, diacetylene-functionalized oligomer have been formed to promote polymer stability through network formation. The diacetylene groups on the oligomer and acetylene end groups can be thermally activated at 250 ??o form distributed polymer networks. Compatible blends of Matrimid and the crosslinking agent can be formed with up to 10% (w/w) crosslinking agent content. Matrimid and the blends have been investigated in the form of dense, nonporous films to evaluate their membrane performance. In terms of material stabilization, it has been found that heat treatment of the neat Matrimid at 250 ??esults in a significant suppression of the material plasticization when exposed to toluene. Addition of the crosslinking oligomer to Matrimid promotes further reduction in swelling and toluene sorption. Transport studies of the reaction components in the materials show that addition of the crosslinking oligomer results in reduced diffusion of the permeating components in the mem-brane materials. However, some increases in solute sorption occur and this is attributed to the oligomer chemistry. A 10% blend of crosslinking agent and Matrimid gave a superior catalyst rejection of 91.5%. The catalyst rejection system has been modeled using Maxwell-Stefan transport equa-tions. Through the model it was found the flux coupling significantly influences the separation characteristics, with sorption of both the solvent and solute as key factors.

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Due to capillary pressure, reservoir heterogeneity, oil mobility, and lack of reservoir energy, typically more than 50 % of the original oil in place is left in the reservoir after primary and secondary recovery oil production. With relatively easy-to-get conventional oil resources diminishing and the price of oil hovering around triple digits, enhanced oil recovery methods, such as polymer flooding, have become very attractive ways to recover oil effectively from existing reservoirs. Enhanced oil recovery methods can be categorized into three categories: water or chemical based, gas based, and thermal based. This thesis will focus on the chemical injection of surfactants, alkali, and polymer of the water based methods. Surfactants are used to alter the interfacial tension of the aqueous and oleic phases in order to facility oil production. Alkali chemicals are used to create surfactants by reacting with acidic oil. And polymer is used to reduce injection water mobility to effectively displace the contacted oil in heterogeneous reservoirs by improving the volumetric and displacement sweep efficiencies. This research presents several laboratory results of polymer and alkali/surfactant/polymer core floods performed in the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering laboratories. Properties of polymer and surfactant phase behavior were measured and modeled and each coreflood was history matched with UTCHEM, a three-dimensional chemical flooding simulator. The coreflood results and the history matched model parameters were then upscaled to a pilot case for viscous oil in offshore environment with four wells in a line drive pattern. The potential of polymer flooding was investigated and several sensitivity cases were performed to evaluate the effect of various physical property parameters on oil recovery. Water salinity and hardness (i.e. amount of calcium and magnesium) has detrimental effects on polymer viscosity and its stability. The potential benefits of low salinity water injection by desalinization of seawater for polymer flood projects have been discussed in recent publications. The effect of low salinity polymer flood was also investigated. A series of sensitivity studies on well pattern and well spacing is carried out to investigate the impact on recovery factor and recovery time. / text