A posição filosófica chamada de externismo semântico caracteriza-se pela tese segundo a qual a individuação do conteúdo de estados mentais deve recorrer a fatores que não podem ser localizados na região geralmente circunscrita pela noção mesma de mente. Tal tese implica, em todo caso, que a suposta interioridade da vida psicológica não se basta para tornar inteligível as condições de possibilidade que o pensamento conceitual requer. Assim, se fatores externos aos indivíduos são vistos como desempenhando uma contribuição decisiva na própria determinação de seu conteúdo mental, isto é algo que torna necessário compreender em que sentido mente e mundo podem ser tomados como intrinsecamente relacionados. A aposta teórica do presente trabalho é a de que apenas uma concepção da individuação liberada dos grilhões substancialistas permite fornecer um solo ontológico fértil para uma teoria externista do conceito. Daí que a noção de triangulação, que Donald Davidson forjou para dar conta de alguns fatores cruciais na gênese da conceitualidade, seja lida a partir de filosofias que ressaltam o caráter decisivo da vida como referencialidade fundamental do conceito. Logo, é na ordem vital que se busca dissolver os impasses ligados à origem da normatividade e à dualidade entre interno e externo, oposição a partir da qual a subjetividade desde muito tempo tem sido pensada. / The philosophical position called semantic externalism is characterized by the thesis according to which the individuation of the content of mental states must make reference to traits that cannot be placed inside the sphere usually circumscribed by the very notion of mind. Such a thesis implies, anyway, that the supposed interiority of the psychological life is not enough to make intelligible the conditions that conceptual thought requires. If factors external to individuals are seen as entertaining a decisive contribution in the very determination of their mental content, that is makes it necessary to understand in what sense mind and world can be taken as intrinsically related. The theoretical bet of the present thesis is that only a conception of individuation free from the substantialist commitments can provide a fertile ontological ground to an externalist theory of the concept. In this sense, the notion of triangulation, that Donald Davidson has forged to explain some crucial elements in the genesis of conceptuality, is read from the standpoint of philosophies that highlight the decisive character of life as fundamental referentiality of the concept itself. So, it is in the vital order that some deadlocks concerning the origins of normativity and the inner outer duality structural opposition under which from a long time subjectivity is thought upon, are dissolved.

A consecutive number of studies on the adoption trend of logistics technology since 1988 revealed that logistics organizations are not in the frontier when it comes to adopting new technology and this delayed adoption creates an information gap. In the advent of supply chain management and the strategic position of logistics, the need for accurate and timely information to accompany the logistics executives became more important than ever before. Given the integrative nature of logistics technology, failure to implement the technology successfully could result in writing off major investments in developing and implementing the technology or even in abandoning the strategic initiatives underpinned by these innovations. Consequently, the need to employ effective strategies and models to cope with these uncertainties is rather crucial. This thesis addresses the aspect of uncertainty in implementation success by process and factor research models. Process research approach focuses on the sequence of events in the technology transfer process that occurs over time. It explains the story that explains the degree of association between these sequences and implementation success. Through content analysis, this research gathers, extracts, and categorizes process data of actual stories of logistics technology adoption and implementations in organizations that are published in literature. The extracted event sequences are then analyzed using optimal matching from natural science and grouped using cluster analysis. Four patterns were revealed that organizations follow to transfer logistics technology namely, formal minimalist, mutual adaptation, development concerned, and organizational roles dispenser. Factors that contribute to successful implementation in each pattern were defined as the crucial and necessary events that characterized and differentiated each pattern from others. The factor approach identifies the potential predictors of successful technology implementation and tests empirical association between predictors and outcomes. This research develops a logistics technology success model. In developing the model, various streams of research were investigated including logistics, information systems, and organizational psychology. The model is tested using a questionnaire survey study. The data were collected from Australian companies which have recently adopted and implemented logistics technology. The results of a partial least squares structured equation modeling provide strong support for the model constructs and valuable insights to logistics/supply chain managers. The last study reports a convergent triangulation study using multiple case study of three Australian companies which have implemented logistics technology. A within and a cross case analysis of the three cases provide cross validation for the results of the other two studies. The results provided high predictive validity for the two models. Furthermore, the case study approach was so beneficial in explaining and contextualizing the linkages of the factor-based model and in confirming the importance of the crucial events in the process-based model. The thesis concludes with a research and managerial implications chapter which is devoted for logistics/supply chain managers and researchers.

Tourism is promoted by the governments of many developing countries because it offers the potential for creating jobs, thus generating income for the country and revenue for the government. However, the tourism industry can also be viewed as a destructive force, associated with negative externalities such as the loss of natural landscapes, congestion, and environmental and cultural degradation. These problems are more likely to be exacerbated where there is a lack of well-designed planning and effective management of tourism development. An essential component of any management of tourism is the ability to engage with, and get a positive response from, the tourism industry. There are a wide range of enterprises involved in providing tourist products and experiences, and in many nations, both developing and developed, a large number of these businesses are small and medium in size and tend to operate at a local scale. The informal nature of tourism enterprises in the developing world can make it difficult to spread awareness of tourism policy and to measure moves towards more sustainable performance on the part of the industry. Using the case study of tourism in the city of Hue, this thesis argues that it is essential to understand both what tourism enterprises know about sustainable tourism practice and policy and also how they respond to its adoption, if we are to more fully understand tourism and its links to sustainable economic development. Located on the central northern coast of Vietnam, Hue is well known for its cultural resources and natural beauty, and the province has become a major tourism centre in Vietnam. The city of Hue itself is recognized as having international heritage value and was listed as a world cultural heritage site by UNESCO in 1993. During the last decade, tourism revenues have increased by nearly 35% per annum, and Hue has made great efforts to both stimulate and cater for increasing demand for its tourism products and services. The Vietnamese government has introduced a number of policies designed to enhance environmental quality generally and, more specifically, to improve the sustainability of enterprises in the tourism sector. This thesis examines the degree to which tourism enterprises in the city of Hue are aware of the broad concept of sustainable tourism and of the specific legislation designed to influence the sustainability of their businesses. I examine the structure and make-up of the industry and then analyse whether characteristics such as size, ownership type and sectoral focus play a role in influencing awareness of, and response to, government policy. The research triangulates data-gathering methods: secondary data, literature reviews, semi-structured interviews and an enterprise survey are all used to gain insights into the core research questions. Each method feeds into and is strengthened by the others, and their combination (including 50 interviews and 180 survey responses) provides a robust data set to work from. The findings reveal that many of the firms operating in the Hue tourism industry are characterized by weak institutional practices, low financial capacity, poor facilities and a lack of broader awareness of policies that influence sustainable tourism practice. The tourism industry’s awareness of general sustainable development issues is low, and much business practice focuses on short-term rather than long-term perspectives. This limits the use of environmentally friendly practices by firms, especially small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), in their daily business activities. The study reveals that there is no significant variation in the adoption of sustainable tourism practices according to the size of enterprises, especially if the practices in question are simple and can be introduced with cost savings. However, as the cost and complexity of introducing environmental measures increases, we see a greater ability on the part of larger enterprises to adopt such actions – partly because they are in a stronger position to bear the short-terms costs of implementing such approaches. There are a wide range of factors that constrain the Hue tourism industry from adopting more sustainable tourism practices. Internal constraints such as limited financial and human resources are combined with external constraints such as increasing cost-based competition, the lack of enforcement of government policies, and limited awareness of sustainable tourism pracitces. All of these factors play a crucial role in shaping the actions of enterprises in relation to sustainable tourism practices and policies. The results of this study also point to the fact that government sustainable tourism initiatives that rely on ‘command-and-control’ approaches will have limited effect; instead, a variety of institutional economic instruments offer greater potential to overcome deficiencies in the ability of the market to drive tourism enterprises towards more sustainable business practices. The thesis also argues that it is important to develop approaches that can cope with the special challenges attached to management of sustainable tourism development in destinations that are dominated by SMEs. The thesis contributes to the growing body of theory and literature in sustainable tourism development and tourism-enterprise behaviour. It also makes an important contribution to our understanding of tourism enterprises in the developing world. In particular, the findings add an important layer of understanding to those attempting to develop a more sustainable tourism industry in Vietnam. Specifically, it provides policy-makers with important insights into the ways in which different types of tourism enterprises respond to initiatives that relate to improved business sustainability.

Dimensional metrology is of prime importance in the industrial and scientific domains, particularly in the field of quality control of manufactured products. In robotics too: without dimensional sensors, robots would be nothing else more than automatons, going through the same repetitive tasks again and again in a carefully controlled environment. This thesis deals with a noncontact measurement technique involving active vision, called triangulation under laser plane lighting. This optomechatronic method consists in projecting a laser sheet on an object or a surface under test, and analyzing the intersecting curve on an image taken by a camera. It allows making a wide variety of dimensional, noncontact and nondestructive, measurements (length, area, volume, diameter, curvature, reverse engineering,...). The original approach of the work is that the focus is brought on the determination of specific, restricted dimensional information on objects of diverse, but a priori known, shapes with the objective of achieving metrological performances in agreement with the industrial requirements. Furthermore, ambulatory instruments­i.e. devices that are at least portable, or even handheld­are exclusively aimed, using low-cost components. Another objective is to obtain systems for which an industrial transposition to innovative instrumental products is feasible. The text is divided in two distinct parts, both strongly correlated. The first one deals with all the theoretical aspects of the method: camera model, passage from 2-D image to 3-D scene, image processing, calibration, accuracy analysis... The performances of the developed models are also studied, in terms of robustness and repeatability. The second part describes four innovative applications of our own: the diameter measurement of cylindrical and of spherical objects, dimensional measurements in the building sector and the determination of the road surface microtexture. The achieved accuracies are globally of about 1%.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Dimensional metrology is of prime importance in the industrial and scientific domains, particularly in the field of quality control of manufactured products. In robotics too: without dimensional sensors, robots would be nothing else more than automatons, going through the same repetitive tasks again and again in a carefully controlled environment. This thesis deals with a noncontact measurement technique involving active vision, called triangulation under laser plane lighting. This optomechatronic method consists in projecting a laser sheet on an object or a surface under test, and analyzing the intersecting curve on an image taken by a camera. It allows making a wide variety of dimensional, noncontact and nondestructive, measurements (length, area, volume, diameter, curvature, reverse engineering,...). The original approach of the work is that the focus is brought on the determination of specific, restricted dimensional information on objects of diverse, but a priori known, shapes with the objective of achieving metrological performances in agreement with the industrial requirements. Furthermore, ambulatory instruments­i.e. devices that are at least portable, or even handheld­are exclusively aimed, using low-cost components. Another objective is to obtain systems for which an industrial transposition to innovative instrumental products is feasible. The text is divided in two distinct parts, both strongly correlated. The first one deals with all the theoretical aspects of the method: camera model, passage from 2-D image to 3-D scene, image processing, calibration, accuracy analysis... The performances of the developed models are also studied, in terms of robustness and repeatability. The second part describes four innovative applications of our own: the diameter measurement of cylindrical and of spherical objects, dimensional measurements in the building sector and the determination of the road surface microtexture. The achieved accuracies are globally of about 1%.

In this thesis, we will present examples of Voronoi diagrams that are not tessellations. Moreover, we will find sufficient conditions on subspaces of E2, S2 and the Poincaré disk and the sets of sites that guarantee that the Voronoi diagrams are pre-triangulations. We will also study g-spaces, which are metric spaces with ‘extendable’ geodesics joining any 2 points and give properties for a set of sites in a g-space that again guarantees that the Voronoi diagram is a pre-triangulation.

In this thesis, we will present examples of Voronoi diagrams that are not tessellations. Moreover, we will find sufficient conditions on subspaces of E2, S2 and the Poincaré disk and the sets of sites that guarantee that the Voronoi diagrams are pre-triangulations. We will also study g-spaces, which are metric spaces with ‘extendable’ geodesics joining any 2 points and give properties for a set of sites in a g-space that again guarantees that the Voronoi diagram is a pre-triangulation.

In order to stay competitive and to be the first choice for customers in a world driven by a high level of competitive advantage, it is important for companies to stay ahead of the competition by conducting thorough market research. Even if this tends to be the case, many products still fail when reaching the market, leaving companies with great losses. The reason for this could be that the development of existing research methods has stagnated, or that they simply lack the ability to find the true answer as to what intentions underlie consumer’s decision making when shopping. Many believe that a new method is desired in order to get a better picture of what customers really think. As a solution to the problem, researchers are using a mix of neuroscience and marketing in order to get into the customers minds. Therefore, this study seeks to create knowledge about the new emerging trend called neuromarketing and its potential as a complement or substitute to surveys, interviews and focus groups. In order to achieve this purpose, relevant theory was collected and compared to the empirical data from focus group studies that were conducted. Findings show that scanning customers’ brains, for now, cannot fully substitute surveys, interviews or focus groups, since each have their own investigational characteristics. This could although change as neuromarketing still is in an early development stage and researchers believe that the method has good future potential. Although neuromarketing cannot be seen as a substitute for now, it still has its advantages compared to surveys, interviews and focus groups. We therefore see that scanning of the brain could be used as a sufficient complement to the other methods through triangulation if companies can afford it.

In the steel industry, laser triangulation based measurement systems can be utilizedfor evaluating the flatness of the steel products. Shapeline is a company in Linköpingthat manufactures such measurement systems. This thesis work will present a series ofexperiments on a Shapeline measurement system in a relatively untested environment, thehot rolling mill at SSAB in Borlänge.The purpose of this work is to evaluate how the conditions at a hot rolling mill affectsthe measurement performance. It has been anticipated that measuring in high temperatureenvironment would introduce difficulties that do not exist when measuring in cold environments.A number of different experiments were conducted, where equipment such as laserand camera bandpass filter were alternated. Via the experiments, information about noisedue to the environment in the hot rolling mill was gained. The most significant noise wascaused by heat shimmering. Using the presented methods, the magnitude and frequencyspectrum of the heat shimmering noise could be determined. The results also indicates thatheat shimmering cause large errors and is quite troublesome to counter. In addition to this,the quality of the line detections under the hot rolling mill circumstances was examined. Itcould be observed that the line detections did not introduce any significant errors despitethe harmful conditions.