Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel The Master and Margarita offers a humorous and caustic depiction of 1930s Moscow. Woven around the premise of a visit by the devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union, it is directed against the repressive bureaucratic social order of the time. In chapter 12 of the book, the devil appears onstage at the Variety Theater and turns Moscow on its head. By appealing to their greed and desire for status, he turns the spectators into the spectacle. A close reading of the text confirms that the Theater is much more than a fictional setting for the chapter. Instead, it serves as a backdrop for a disturbing portrait of human frailty, a scathing criticism of Soviet bureaucracy and hypocrisy, and unmistakable references to real-life Moscow institutions and to the author’s personal experiences during the tumultuous 1930s. / text

The goal of the thesis is to analyze an existing Axial Flux Permanent Magnet motor used for Shell Eco Marathon from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The existing machine has been analysed and modified to achieve improved power density at high efficiency with lowered weight.A detailed literature study on AFPM machine topologies, winding and magnet arrangements is covered. The magnet arrangement of the existing machine has been transformed from conventional North-South to Halbach array. The preliminary analytical calculations were done by using analytical expressions. After that, for an improved design, an efficiency-based optimization has been used to improve the obtained parameters from analytical calculation. This optimization has been performed with the help of fmincon solver in the Matlab optimization tool. The optimized values after being compared with the analytical calculation, has been used to run Finite Element Method simulations.The new design with optimum performance parameters displays an improvement of overall efficiency with decreased weight in comparison. The new machine has a 97.2% efficiency and weights only 6.24 kg. In comparison with the existing machine, the weight of the new machine is almost half with improved efficiency.KeywordsAxial Flux, Permanent Magnet, Synchronous Motor, Ironless Stator, Halbach.

AbstractBackground: In an applied engineering field like requirements engineering, the final goal of the research is its adoption by industry. For technology transfer to be possible practitioners need strong evidence for a technology’s applicability and possible benefits. Therefore research on a technology should be done in a realistic setting so that practitioners can use the results to build a strong case for its adoption. Quality requirements are constraints placed on the software. Empirical results show challenges in handling quality requirements, e.g. include late discovery of quality requirements. In addition, we lack technologies that can be used to incorporate them into the final software. Functional and quality requirements differ in nature; treatment given to functional requirements will not always be applicable for quality requirements. Therefore practitioners need decision support material based on empirical evidence to incorporate the suggested technologies.Objective: The purpose of the thesis is to identify technologies for quality requirements that have been empirically evaluated. Methods in relation to elicitation, specification, metrics (or measurement) and testing will be identified with the aim of providing decision support material to practitioners for incorporating quality requirements in the software. To find possible future directions of requirements engineering research, the current state of technology adoption for quality requirements will be identified. Method: The presented research is explorative and investigative in nature. A systematic literature review method was employed to identify potential technologies for adoption. An empirical study was conducted with three participants from three companies to get an insight into the state of technology adoption. Results: The systematic literature review includes 46 papers published between 2000 and 2010. All in all only four of the 46 papers offer high realism and support for technology adoption, i.e. presenting evaluations in a realistic setting, with practitioners using real world industrial applications. Another three papers were found to have potential in terms of furthering technology transfer. A general finding common for many of the papers reviewed is a lack of scientific rigour which affects the credibility of the results. Among the participants in the three companies interviewed, none of the methods presented were used. Conclusions: Technology transfer support for quality requirements technologies is challenged by low strength of evidence. Evaluations of technologies lack descriptions of evaluation design - description of how evaluations have been performed - and validity. There is a need for more and better empirical evaluations of technologies to handle quality requirements. The results of industrial interviews shows the need for more empirical investigations, for example surveys, to identify current industrial practices and technologies able to handle or incorporate quality requirements in projects successfully.

Based on the empirical analysis of the terrorist activities, we can say that developed and globalized countries are more safer than the developing countries. The terrorist attacks are considerably low in these countries.To analyze the role of new technologies in terrorism and the actual use of ICT in terrorism, I have focused on the terrorist groups operating in Pakistan. These groups are taking advantage of these technologies in many ways like, Recruiting, Propaganda, Fund raising etc.Answer to the question of Islamic terrorist threat to the West again based on the empirical analysis. The analysis shows that Islamic terrorism is on continuous decline. Islamic terrorist groups are involved highly in other countries, especially Muslim majority countries. The analysis also showed that there is very less impact of the the new technologies on Islamic terrorism.

The reaction-diffusion master equation (RDME) is a stochastic model for spatially heterogeneous chemical systems. Stochastic models have proved to be useful for problems from molecular biology since copy numbers of participating chemical species often are small, which gives a stochastic behaviour. The RDME is a discrete space model, in contrast to spatially continuous models based on Brownian motion. In this thesis two accuracy issues of the RDME on unstructured meshes are studied. The first concerns the rates of diffusion events. Errors due to previously used rates are evaluated, and a second order accurate finite volume method, not previously used in this context, is implemented. The new discretisation improves the accuracy considerably, but unfortunately it puts constraints on the mesh, limiting its current usability. The second issue concerns the rates of bimolecular reactions. Using the macroscopic reaction coefficients these rates become too low when the spatial resolution is high. Recently, two methods to overcome this problem by calculating mesoscopic reaction rates for Cartesian meshes have been proposed. The methods are compared and evaluated, and are found to work remarkably well. Their possible extension to unstructured meshes is discussed.

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The aim of this work – to investigate organization of tourism master study in Lithuania and foreign countries. In the master work there are investigated the programs of the tourism master study, analyzed the organization of the tourism master study, formulated the deficiency of formation of the tourism master study programs, offered the suggestions how to improve the organizations of studies and proposed the alternative model of the tourism master study program. There are analyzed foreign countries and Lithuanian Universities tourism master study programs and done the comparable analysis. The questionnaire inquest is done in the Lithuanian Universities which qualify tourism masters. The author confirms the hypotheses what tourism masters in the Lithuanian Universities take only theoretical information and the tourism master study programs of the Lithuanian Universities are not liberal with respect to students.

Learning motivation should be analysed as complex structure of personality, containing cognitive attitudes, needs, interests and motives. Any effective pedagogical correction is possible if focus is made only on the main (at that moment) structural element of learning motivation. Every student would be motivated for high-level studies if the university creates correspondent conditions of learning environment. Object of this study is learning motivation of the first year students of Master courses in the universities of Kaunas. Task of study is to analyse prevailing and dominant learning motives of students (n=142). After investigating peculiarities of learning motivation of studies of the first year Master students two main motives (future and intrinsic/ cognitive and social) were identified. Our respondents named such factors which determinate their successful studies – study tasks corresponding to interests and predispositions, stuff’s permanent stimulation for student to have in contemplation their own learning motivation Key words: learning motivation, master studies.

Šio darbo tikslas – nustatyti, kokie aplinkos veiksniai veikia organizacijų veiklą bei kokia jų įtaka organizacijos veiklos gerinimui, panaudojant anketas. Magistro darbe yra išanalizuoti ir susisteminti įvairių Lietuvos ir užsienio autorių mokslinės literatūros šaltiniai apie organizacijas, jų vidinę ir išorinę aplinką bei jos svarbą organizacijų veiklai. Apklausti vadovaujamą darbą dirbantys asmenys bei vartotojai. Gauti duomenys apdoroti SPSS programa. Iš dalies patvirtinta hipotezė, jog vadovaujantį darbą dirbantys darbuotojai nepakankamai domisi organizaciją supančia aplinka bei jos įtaka organizacijos veiklai. / The purpose of this work is to identify what environmental factors influence organization’s performance and how they influence the organization’s performance improvement by using the questionnaire forms. Master work analyses and systemizes different Lithuanian and foreign authors’ sources of scholarly literature about the organizations, their internal and external environment and its significance to the organizations’ performance. The author of this work questioned consumers and the managing people. The received data were processed by SPSS program. It partly confirmed the hypothesis that employees performing the managing work don’t show enough interest to the organization‘s performance improvement.

This study explores the experiences of the master teacher in mentoring teachers. Education officials have acknowledged that capacity and skill gaps are impeding progress in education, especially at schools. Within the school context many teachers are either under-qualified or poorly qualified for their job description and this to a large extent has contributed to the schools being dysfunctional. Therefore a well-structured mentorship programme is integral in upgrading education. Within the new occupation specific dispensation (OSD) for educators in the public sector, the category of master teacher has been created to fulfill their roles as mentors in schools. The purpose of the study therefore attempts to critically examine and explore the experiences of the master teacher in a mentoring role. The rationale for choosing the study ("Master teacher experiences of mentoring teachers") is that I am presently a master teacher at Stanger South Secondary, a school 75 kilometres north of Durban, in the KwaDukuza area of KwaZulu-Natal. However the mentoring role by the master teacher, which has been in existence at schools for over two years, is in some cases non-existent or done in a very fragmented way. The phenomenon of the master teacher as a mentor is relatively new in the context of South African education. Hence very little or no research has be done in this domain. Moreover, most of the literature on mentoring focuses on the plethora of definitions of mentoring, the role of the mentor and the experiences of beginning teachers in the induction programmes at schools and very little research on experiences of mentors, especially within the context of education in South Africa. A qualitative methodology was used using the phenomenological approach. The study employed a purposive sampling technique, choosing 3 respondents from 3 different public schools in the Ilembe district of KwaDukuza area (viz. Cranbrook Secondary, Greyridge Secondary and Doesberg Secondary), who are each subjected to a semi-structured interview. The analysis of the data revealed that three master teacher mentors embraced the discourses of collaboration, collegiality and critical dialogue in their mentoring relationship with their mentees, which forms an important part of the radical humanistic approach to mentoring, which is a shift from the rigid functionalist approach to mentoring that emphasizes conformity and maintaining the status quo. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.