By the late of 2007, the port of Gavle authorities found out that the harbor capacity was not enough, and needs to be increased. This could be done by having new ports area, building new facilities and dredging the bottom of the sea near the harbor. The dredging of sediment will improve the navigation at the port. The upper layer of dredged sediment was found to be contaminated with harmful materials such as TBT, PCBs and metal parts. These sediments had to be amended with cement, fly ash and merit5000. The stabilized material were used as a backfill in reclamation of new areas for terminal expansion.The aim of this study was to evaluate the interaction between the stabilized materials and the steel sheet pile wall. The cone penetration test data were used to evaluate the geotechnical parameters of the backfill material. Analytical calculations were used to illustrate the design of the sheet pile wall. Finite element method (PLAXIS 2D) was used to analyze the interaction of the sheet pile wall with the stabilized material. / <p>Validerat; 20121030 (anonymous)</p>

Over the past few years, there has been a sustained interest in the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) evident by the number of global initiatives focused on SMR development. This desktop study was performed to review the viability of SMRs based on their benefits and flexibility, focusing predominantly on the light water NuScale and the gas cooled AHTR designs. In assessing the level of safety, the typical general design and safety criteria were reviewed to establish a basis to compare the NuScale and AHTR designs. The need for flexibility to support grid operators and the ability of a nuclear plant to load follow were reviewed to confirm their flexibility. The principal of cogeneration and the feasibility for cogeneration and energy storage with SMRs was explored to determine the potential industrial application. Finally, the technical readiness and uncertainties, the potential market and economic competitiveness of SMRs were reviewed. The review established that SMRs with safety performance levels exceeding those of current reactor designs are definitely viable. The ability to prevent fuel failure through passive cooling simplifies the design by eliminating the need for complex safety systems and reduces the constraints associated with siting, opening up energy markets where previously nuclear reactors would not have been viable. Their flexibility and the ability to add additional units over time enable them to integrate into any size electrical network and a variety of energy markets. As a clean energy source, SMRs are well suited to support strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and replace fossil-based energy sources. SMRs operating at high temperatures have the added option of considering thermal storage as a means to provide additional flexibility. The biggest uncertainty in the deployment of SMRs is associated with the regulatory and licencing processes. However, there is a large potential market for SMRs and the lower capital cost per unit, the shorter period until a revenue stream is established and the ability to stagger the financial impact of additional units are expected to make SMRs easier to finance than large nuclear units. This preliminary review concluded that SMRs are definitely viable, but until a SMR design has been successfully licenced, constructed and operated, the uncertainty associated with the licencing of a new technology and the potential for long delays during construction are likely to prevent any large-scale deployment in the near future.

This body of work investigated the influence of alternative jet fuel properties on aviation gas turbine performance at threshold combustor operating conditions. It focused on altitude blowout performance and was in part motivated by results that were encountered during an aviation industry evaluation of synthetic kerosene that complied with the Jet A-1 specification, but differed from the fuel that was used as a reference in terms of some significant properties. As a consequence the relative impact of physical properties and reaction chemistry properties were of primary interest in this study. The thesis considered the potential to blend a range of different alternative jet fuel formulations which exhibited independent variations in properties relating to evaporation and reaction behaviour whilst still conforming to legislated physical fuel specifications. It further explored the potential for said variations having a detectable and significant influence on the simulated high altitude extinction behaviour in a representative aviation gas turbine combustor. Based on the findings, appropriate metrics were suggested for scientifically quantifying the appropriate properties and conclusions were drawn about the potential impact of alternative jet fuel properties on blowout performance. These subjects were addressed primarily through the theoretical analyses of targeted experimental programmes. The experimental design adopted a novel approach of formulating eight test fuels to reflect real-world alternative fuel compositions while still enabling a targeted evaluation of the influences of both physical and chemical reaction properties. A detailed characterisation was performed of the test fuels' physical and reaction properties. The extinction and spray behaviours of the fuels were then evaluated in a laboratory scale combustor featuring dual-swirl geometry and a single prefilming airblast atomiser. The various experimental data sets were interpreted within the context of a theoretical model analysis. In doing so the relative performance of alternative jet fuel formulations under laboratory burner conditions were translated to predict relative real world altitude performance. This approach was validated against aforementioned industry evaluation results and demonstrated to be consistent. A technically defensible explanation was provided for the previously unexplored anomalous altitude extinction results that were observed during the industry evaluation of synthetic jet fuel. A conclusive case was made for the extinction limit differences having been caused by the relative differences in chemical ignition delays of the fuels. The probability of volatility (distillation profile) and fuel physical properties playing a significant role in the impaired altitude performance was discredited. Evaporation-controlled combustion efficiency was, however, shown to become a significant factor at low air mass flow rates or when the fuel evaporation is compromised. The influence of flame speed and chemical ignition delays were investigated. Laminar flame speed was shown not to correlate with LBO, discrediting its use as a proxy for reaction rate. The study showed a correlation between the lean blowout behaviour of jet fuels and the ignition delays associated with their derived cetane numbers. Additionally, there was substantive support indicating that an even stronger correlation could be obtained by operating the IQT™ device that is used to measure these delays at an elevated temperature. The thesis makes a contribution towards the development of both technical understanding and practical tools for evaluating the potential operating limits of alternative jet fuel formulations.

in order for clinicians to make informed medical decisions and prescribe the correct medication within a limited specified time. Since no further informed action can be taken on the patient until the laboratory report reaches the clinician, the delivery of the report to the clinician becomes a critical path in the value chain of the laboratory testing process. The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) currently delivers lab results in three ways: via a physical paper report, and electronically through a web application. The third alternative is for short and high-priority test results, like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB), that are delivered via short message service (SMS) printers in remote rural clinics. However, despite its inefficiencies, the paper report remains the most commonly used method. As turnaround times for basic and critical laboratory tests remain a great challenge for NHLS to meet the specified targets; there is need to shift method of final delivery from paper to a paperless secured electronic result delivery system. Accordingly, the recently-implemented centralised TrakCare Lab laboratory information system (LIS) makes provision for delivery of electronic results via a web application, ‘TrakCarewebview’. However, the uptake of TrakCarewebview has been very low due to the cumbersomeness of the application; this web application takes users through nine steps to obtain the results and is not designed for mobile devices. In addition, its access in remote rural health care facilities is a great challenge because of lack of supportive infrastructure. There is therefore an obvious gap and considerable potential in diagnostic result delivery system that calls for an immediate action to design and development of a less complex, cost effective and usable mobile application, for electronic delivery of laboratory results. After obtaining research ethics clearance approval from the University’s Faculty of Science Research Ethics Committee a research was sanctioned. A survey of public sector clinicians across South Africa indicated that 98% have access to the internet through smartphones, and 93% of the clinicians indicated that they would use their mobile devices to access electronic laboratory results. A significant number of clinicians believe that the use of a mobile application in health facilities will improve patient care. This belief, therefore, set a strong basis for designing and developing a mobile application for laboratory results. The study aims to design and develop a mobile application prototype that can demonstrate the capability of delivering electronic laboratory test results to clinicians on their smart devices, via a usable mobile application. The design of the mobile application prototype was driven by user-centred design (UCD) principles in order to develop an effective design. Core and critical to the process is the design step which establishes the user requirements specifications that meet the user expectations. The study substantiated the importance of the design aspect as the initial critical step in obtaining a good final product. The prototype was developed through an iterative process alternating prototype development and evaluation. The development iterations consisted of a single paper prototyping iteration followed by further two iterations using an interactive Justinmind prototyping tool. Respective to the development iterations, cognitive walk-through and heuristic principles were used to evaluate the usability of the initial prototype. The final prototype was then evaluated using the system usability scale (SUS) survey quantitative tool, which determines the effectiveness and perceived usability of the application. The application scored an average SUS score of 77, which is significantly above the average acceptable SUS score of 68. The standard SUS measurement deems 80 to be an excellent score. Yet a score below 68 is considered below average. The evaluation was conducted by the potential user group which was involved in the initial design process. The ability of the interactive prototyping tool (Justinmind) to mimic the actual final product offered end users a feel of the actual product thus giving the outcome of the evaluation a strong basis to develop the actual product.

Crop diseases are a major impediment to food security in the developing world. The development of cheap and accurate crop diagnosis software would thus be of great benefit to the farming community. A number of previous studies, utilizing computer vision and machine-learning algorithms, have successfully developed applications that can diagnose crop diseases. However, these studies have primarily focussed either on developing large scale remote sensing applications more suited for large scale farming or on developing desktop/laptop applications and a few others on developing high end smartphone applications. Unfortunately, the attendant hardware requirements and expenses make them inaccessible to the majority of the subsistence farmers, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa where both smartphones and personal computers ownership is minimal. The primary objective of our research was to establish the feasibility of utilizing computer vision and machine learning techniques to develop a crop diseases diagnosis application that is not only accessible through personal computers and smartphones but is also accessible through any internet enabled feature phone. Leveraging methods established in previous papers, we successfully developed a prototype crop diseases diagnosis application capable of diagnosing two maize foliar diseases, Common Rust and Grey Leaf Spot. This application is accessible through personal computers and high end smartphones as well as through any internet enabled feature phones. The solution is a responsive web based application constructed using open source libraries whose diagnosing engine utilizes an SVM classifier that can be trained using either SIFT or SURF features. The solution was evaluated to establish classification accuracy, page load times when accessed from different networks and its cross-browser support. The system achieved 73.3% overall accuracy rate when tested using images identical to images end users would upload. Page load times were considerably long on GPRS and 2G network tests. However, they were comparable to average page load times users would experience when accessing google search engine pages from similar networks. Cross-browser support tests indicated that the system is fully compatible with all popular mobile and desktop browsers. Based on the evaluation results, we concluded that it is feasible to develop a crop diseases diagnosis application that in addition to being accessible through personal computers and smartphones can also be accessed through any internet enabled feature phones.

abstract: The difficulty of demonstrating a significant return on investment from the use of advanced data analytics has led to a lack of utilization of this tool. The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is the difficulty of incorporating non-financial metrics in the higher levels of analysis that are fully salient and derived in a manner that can be understood and trusted by organizational leaders. Another challenge that has confounded the use of advanced analytics by the leadership of organizations is the widely accepted belief that models are oftentimes developed with an insufficient number of variables that are expected to have an impact, which inhibits extrapolation of results for use in real-world decision making. This research identifies factors that contribute to the underutilization of analytics models in managerial decisions by leadership of the produce industry, and explores a variety of potential tools including descriptive analytics and dashboards that are able to provide predictive, prescriptive, and more advanced cognitive methods of decision making for use by organizational leadership. By understanding the disconnect between availability of the advanced data analysis tools and use of such tools by organizational leadership, this research assists in identifying the programs and resources that should be developed and presented as opportunities for support in the industrial decision-making process. This dissertation explores why managers within the produce industry underutilize higher levels of data analytics and whether it is possible to increase their levels of cognitive comfort. It shows that by providing leadership with digestible and rudimentary business experiments, they become more comfortable with more complex data analytics and then are better able to utilize dashboards and other tools within their decision-making models. As experiments are explained to managers, they become as comfortable with conducting experiments as they are with dashboards, thus becoming comfortable with evaluating their benefits. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2020

In 2012, the UN Secretary stated that corruption prevented 30 percent of all development assistance from reaching its destination (UNSG, 2012). This thesis discusses the importance of trust and transparency in the charity sector, and how technology, specifically blockchain, could address these two factors. This paper aims to demonstrate this by developing a minimum viable product on the Ethereum blockchain, called the LoveEconomy, for a local South African non-profit organization, the Secret Love Project. The LoveEconomy is designed as a circular economy, whereby local businesses and users of the platform benefit from each other, whilst also supporting the charity, which takes care of homeless people in Cape Town. Blockchain has many features that could potentially transform charitable giving and aid distribution by enhancing transparency, reducing costs through disintermediation, and enabling new mechanisms for monitoring and tracking charities' impact. Trust and transparency are closely linked in the charity industry, as transparency about the distribution of the funds and the end impact are critical for the trust of the public (Populus and Charity Commission For England &amp; Wales, 2018).

The research investigated the use of Moodle in three tertiary level English language programmes at an institution of higher learning in Namibia, using a qualitative approach. As the use of technology in education has become imperative, it was also mandatory for academics at the research site to incorporate technology into their teaching and learning. It aimed to investigate how Moodle was used to enhance English language teaching and learning, emanating from the need of similar studies in the field and at the research site. Also, the research aimed to uncover the successes and challenges that the lecturers and students experienced in the process of using Moodle. The research adopted a case study design with three embedded sub-units: three English language courses. Six lecturers and 15 students participated in the study. Data were collected through interviews, observation and document analysis and were analysed thematically. The research revealed how the lecturers and students involved in the three English language service courses were enthusiastic about using Moodle and a few successes were notable, but they were also challenged in different ways. Four of the lecturers considered themselves to be beginners as they had only recently started to use Moodle extensively, while the other two considered themselves average users of the system. The study revealed more challenges than successes. Minimal use of Moodle in the fundamental and intermediate English language courses, minimal use of the embedded Moodle communication tools, and limited knowledge and skills in using the system emerged as some of the key challenges. Although the institution had training mechanisms in place, both lecturer and student participants pleaded for more staff training opportunities to enable them to use the tools that were found to be underutilised: the blogs, chat and discussion forums. Drawing on the findings of the study, the guidelines for effective use of Moodle are suggested. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / Ph. D. (Education)

The United States has fallen below many countries in international assessments of middle school aged students in the fields math and science. Computer games have only grown in popularity. In the last few decades, the time spent playing computer and video games have increased as well. Educational games try to recapture some of this time that may otherwise be wasted, but many have failed to preserve the main reason people are drawn to them, the sense of fun. Earthquake Rebuild is a game being developed to assist teachers in the presentation of the common core standards in mathematics in a fun and engaging way. The game is being developed for students in grades six through eight. The setting and story line are motivated by the Fukusima earthquake. The player will be rebuilding a village after its destruction by an earthquake. Earthquake Rebuild follows a progression from using temporary structures, such as the container mall found in New Zealand, to more permanent structures as the difficulty increases. Earthquake Rebuild is being developed by a small group of students, educators, and experts. The project is using Unity 4 as the game engine. A proof of concept demo is completed, with classes to score and track players, as well as classes that will ease the development of the next version. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Scientific Computing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester, 2014. / November 14, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references. / Gordon Erlebacher, Professor Directing Thesis; John Burkhardt, Committee Member; Fengfeng Ke, Committee Member; Shachin Shanbhag, Committee Member.

Stokvel, in South Africa, is used as an umbrella term for Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs) which are informal financial associations where the members agree to regularly contribute a set amount to a fund. In South Africa, there are 11.4 million stokvel members which make up about 30% of the adult population. These stokvels save up to R49 billion per year yet, many of the people in these communities that save this money find themselves unable to gain access to credit and savings facilities. An agile and iterative approach was used to develop a web-based stokvel management application that allows groups to adopt a structure where there are borrowers who pay interest, and savers and investors who will receive interest on their savings. Four different evaluations were carried out on the system namely, (1) system testing, to evaluate the implemented features and their correctness, (2) a heuristic evaluation with a set of expert evaluators, (3) usability testing and (4) user acceptance testing with potential users of the application. The evaluators and users gave the application a combined score of 76.875, which translates to a good interface on the System Usability Scale. The users accepted the application, however, the system usability testing showed that the interface needed improvement. The system was developed using multiple iterations but time constraints did not allow for multiple iterations of user testing. It is best to have multiple iterations of user testing so that the user experience feedback can be incorporated into the following iterations