Temporal and spatial cognition constitute basic elements of the cognitive function. Both of these competences are important for the individual's orientation and survival and there are likely to be different interactions between them. Perception of time, unlike spatial navigation and memory, is less explored. Impairments of interval timing occur in many neurodegenera- tive and neuropsychiatric disorders. According to current studies it is evident that timing is impaired even in patients with schizophrenia, but the results are still ambiguous. The aim of our work was to test the AAPA task in the time-place integration in the ani- mal model of schizophrenia. In the future, it could help to clarify the impairments of the time perception in patients with schizophrenia. In contrast to the classic AAPA task, our version included alternating of phases of light and darkness. The assumption of the experiment was that the solution of the task by rats in the dark is more dependent on the timing strategy than the solution of the task during the light, which is dependent on the spatial orientation. In the first phase of the experiment, the rats adopted both strategies - spatial (during the light phase of the session) and timing (during the dark phase). In the next phase of the experiment, we tested the animal...

Magister Commercii - MCom / This study seeks to evaluate the performance of unit trust managers based on their client affiliation classification. Worldwide, the number of investors investing in unit trusts is on the rise and increasingly they want to be able to evaluate the performance of the managers managing their funds so as to make better investment decisions. This increase in the asset size and number of unit trusts funds could be attributed but not limited to the low capital required for investment by small investors who before could not afford to invest in portfolios requiring large capital (Prather, Bertin, and Henker, 2004). In addition, the fund managers of these units are believed to have special skills such as market timing and stock selectivity which contribute to the performances they achieve. The evaluation of the performance of unit trust fund managers is a largely unexplored area in South Africa. As a result, the study focuses on South Africa fund managers and has as aim to evaluate the performance of two groups of fund managers (independent and dependent) who were classified based on their client affiliation structure. The client affiliation classification is as a result of the fund manager's clientele base. The dependent group are those who formed part of a group structure and offer other wealth management services for which their clients or investors in the unit trust services originate from within the group while the independent group are those whose clients are pulled together from diverse individuals or institutions and does not form part of a group or render other services other than fund management. Two fund types were selected namely; general equity funds and balanced funds. It has also examined the underlying skills the different groups of fund managers possess. The performance of unit trust has an effect on many parties who are related in one way or the other to the unit trust funds. The results of this study will inform individual investors, trustees and asset consultants in their decision making process of selecting a fund manager. The results of the study will be of value to the asset management industry in terms of assessing their structures and restructuring the investment service business to meet the expectations of their clients; the investors. It could also be used as a marketing tool. Publicly available historical data on the returns generated by fund managers for a five year period from 2005 to 2009 was obtained. Analyses were done using the independent sampled t-test and the Treynor Mazel model respectively for the different research questions posed. The results obtained indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between the performances of independent fund managers with those of dependent fund managers. However, dependent fund managers of equity funds performed better than their counterparts the independent fund managers. In the case of balanced funds, the independent fund managers performed better than their dependent counterparts. On average, both fund manager types possessed selectivity skills for equity funds and none for balanced funds. However for both fund types, the dependent fund manager demonstrated more selectivity skills than their independent counterparts. The results for market timing skills demonstrated that on average, both fund managers did not possess market timing skills for balanced funds while possessing these skills for equity funds. The dependent fund managers demonstrated more market timing skills for balanced funds though negative when compared to that of their counterparts. On the other hand, the equity fund independent fund managers demonstrated more market timing skills than the dependent fund managers. / South Africa

Magister Public Health - MPH / Disclosure of HIV positive status to male partners is well established as a key element in the success of prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV programmes, as it helps improve adherence to ARVs by the women within these programme. However, partner notification rates remain low in the urban areas of Lusaka, Zambia against a high HIV prevalence of 25%. The purpose of this study was to explore the timing of disclosure as part of the process of disclosure amongst women who were part of the PMTCT services at Kaulu health centre in Lusaka. An exploratory descriptive study using qualitative research methods was conducted. 15 women, who were attending the Kaulu health centre PMTCT programme, were requested to participate in a semi-structured interview. The women, who were purposively selected with the aid of the health centre‟s PMTCT focal point nurse, had to have disclosed their HIV positive status to their partner, either before or during the course of their pregnancy or after delivery. To increase rigour, individual interviews were conducted with 5 health workers associated with the PMTCT programme so as to obtain their perspective and experiences on the issue of HIV disclosure amongst their PMTCT patients. Participation in the study was voluntary and all information obtained during the course of the interviews remained confidential and secure. Potential participants were each provided with an explanation of the purpose and process of the study and their informed written consent obtained before the researcher embarked on the interviews. Content analysis of the transcripts was done so as to develop coding categories and identify emerging themes. Disclosure to male partners is an important step in PMTCT and facilitates adherence to HIV care for the family and should be done as early as possible after the woman receives her HIV test result, though there exists a range of alternative times when it can be done. The relationship existing between a couple is very important in determining the timing of when a woman chooses to disclose. PMTCT services need to provide ongoing counselling for HIV positive women during pregnancy and after giving birth that supports, informs and equips them with the necessary skills to make an informed and timely decision about disclosure to a partner. In addition, the PMTCT service providers need to be encouraged to implement couple counselling as a strategy to facilitate disclosure as well as establishment of a peer support network for HIV positive pregnant women. The study findings will be used to contribute to health workers‟ capacity to support women manage the disclosure process to their male partners, thus helping to increase the disclosure rate and also contributing to improving the positive effect of the PMTCT services, in Lusaka, Zambia. / South Africa

Although early reproduction within a breeding season often leads to higher reproductive success in seasonal environments, it is still not well understood how reproductive success can be influenced by climate both indirectly through the timing of breeding or by directly altering parental behaviour. In this thesis, I investigate the role of ambient temperature in reproductive success through its effects on the timing of reproduction and brooding in a population of gray jays, Perisoreus canadensis. In chapter 2, I test whether (i) female gray jays adjust laying date in response to temperature, (ii) individual or environmental characteristics constrain this plasticity, and (iii) laying date influences reproductive success. Females laid earlier in warmer years than in colder years; females partnered with older males laid earlier than females partnered with younger males at colder temperatures, but not at warmer temperatures. Early layers were more likely to rear at least one nestling and have a dominant juvenile survive the summer. These findings suggest that male experience could advance female laying date at cold temperatures and subsequently increase the probability of a positive nesting outcome. Though cold temperatures appear to limit timing of reproduction in gray jays, previous work in this system suggests that cold temperatures could better preserve perishable winter food stores. Thus, in chapter 3, I test whether temperatures during early offspring development interact with timing of reproduction to influence reproductive performance. Colder ambient temperatures during incubation were associated with larger brood sizes than warmer temperatures among late breeders, but temperature did not influence brood size among early layers, indicating that costs of late breeding may be amplified by temperatures that are unfavourable for food storage. This thesis contributes to our understanding of the environmental factors that determine reproductive performance, both through effects on timing of reproduction and after eggs are laid.

This research studies the phenomena of hospital groups expanding beyond their home country by setting up operations in less developed countries, and patients travelling out of their country for healthcare services, by looking at the internationalisation of private healthcare firms from Singapore. The research helps to address a gap in the literature as there is a lack of firm-level research on internationalisation of healthcare firms, and even more so for firms from Southeast Asia. For practitioners, the research offers a better understanding of the internationalisation strategies and choices adopted by healthcare firms, and more generally, service firms. With the region which Singapore is part of undergoing rapid integration, the study also offers useful insights on the impact of regional integration on internationalisation of healthcare firms. Using a multiple-case study of four private healthcare firms from Singapore, the research examines the where (market selection), how (entry modes) and when (timing) of their internationalisation, as well as their response to regional integration, in the context of existing literature on internationalisation of firms. The study shows that the internationalisation strategies of healthcare firms from Singapore, in relation to market selection, entry modes and timing of entry, were well-explained by existing theories on internationalisation of firms. Family ownership was identified as a reason for the deviation from theory for one of the cases. Specifically on the internationalisation of healthcare firms, the study shows that healthcare services in Singapore is undergoing commodification, with increasing use of and emphasis on 'marketing' to procure patients-customers; increasing emphasis on quality; and the creation of customers and consumers. This has made healthcare services increasingly 'exportable' in the sense that they can be 'sold' overseas away from the point of 'production', via representative offices, instead of having to rely on higher commitment non-export entry modes as indicated in the literature. Another deviation from literature was the case firms' stated preference to make market entry using management contract instead of joint venture. This can be attributed to their strategic need to internationalise quickly and the high cost of building new healthcare facilities. Using the findings from the analysis, the thesis proposed a characterization of the internationalisation strategies of a healthcare firm from Singapore, in terms of market selection, entry modes and timing of entry. A conceptual model on the internationalisation of healthcare firms was also developed, identifying the factors which may influence the internationalisation of healthcare firms. Besides, the study identified that the healthcare firms went through four phases of internationalisation process, namely, learning, opportunistic, de-internationalisation and maturisation, with each presenting some unique patterns of internationalisation by the firms. Further analysis showed that the four phases tied in well with the 'Link-Leverage-Learn' framework of Mathews (2006) for emerging/second wave multinational enterprises (MNEs), hence offering a new perspective for evaluating the internationalisation of such firms in future. On impact of regional integration, a possible 'ideal' model for a healthcare MNE in an economically integrated region was proposed. Applying the model, it is proposed that internationalisation by healthcare MNEs will increase as the region integrates, and there will be further consolidation within the industry. Healthcare MNEs from small countries like Singapore are likely to compete particularly strongly, as they are under even greater pressure to secure the foreign markets given the constraint of their small domestic population.

Placement is one of the most important steps in physical design for VLSI circuits. For field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the placement step determines the location of each logic block. I present novel timing and congestion driven placement algorithms for FPGAs with minimal runtime overhead. By predicting the post-routing timing-critical edges and estimating congestion accurately, this algorithm is able to simultaneously reduce the critical path delay and the minimum number of routing tracks. The core of the algorithm consists of a criticality-history record of connection edges and a congestion map. This approach is applied to the 20 largest Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) benchmark circuits. Experimental results show that compared with the state-of-the-art FPGA place and route package, the Versatile Place and Route (VPR) suite, this algorithm yields an average of 8.1% reduction (maximum 30.5%) in the critical path delay and 5% reduction in channel width. Meanwhile, the average runtime of the algorithm is only 2.3X as of VPR.

Le LHC, qui est le collisionneur proton-proton le plus puissant du monde situé au CERN (Suisse), donne une occasion unique de pouvoir tester nos connaissances des interactions fondamentales à l'échelle du TeV. Au cours de cette thèse, deux projets ont été accomplis dans ce but. Tout d'abord, la mesure de la section efficace de production d'au moins deux photons dans l'état final (pp→γγ+X) a été réalisée à l'aide des données prises avec une énergie dans le centre de masse de 8 TeV par le détecteur ATLAS, qui est l'un des détecteurs polyvalents installé autour du LHC. Les photons sont des particules intéressantes pour tester la théorie de l'interaction forte (chromodynamique quantique ou QCD) car ils sont couplés aux quarks et aux gluons sans pour autant s'hadroniser, ce qui permet de pouvoir les mesurer avec une très bonne résolution. La mesure de leur taux de production au LHC permet de tester la QCD à la fois dans le domaine perturbatif et non-perturbatif. Elle est également sensible à l'émission de particules à basse énergie dans l'état initial, qui est un phénomène délicat à décrire d'un point de vue théorique à cause des divergences molles et collinéaires découlant de la QCD. Les incertitudes expérimentales ont été divisées par un facteur 2 ou plus comparé aux mesures réalisées précédemment au LHC ou au Tevatron (Fermilab, États-Unis) et la très bonne statistique des données d'ATLAS à 8 TeV a permis une augmentation significative à la fois de la résolution et de la portée de la mesure. En général, un bon accord est observé avec les prédictions théoriques. Le second projet réalisé au cours de la thèse est consacré à l'évaluation du potentiel de découverte relié à la mesure de la diffusion γγ au LHC (γγ→γγ). La diffusion γγ est un processus singulier car prédit uniquement via des fluctuations quantiques qui n'a jamais été observé directement. Il implique un terme de couplage à quatre photons, qui montre une sensibilité significative à une large gamme de modèles d'extension du modèle standard à haute énergie, tels que ceux prédisant l'existence de dimensions supplémentaires de l'espace pour résoudre le problème de hiérarchie. En tirant profit du flux important de photons venant des protons au LHC, je montre qu'il est possible de découvrir des couplages anomaux à quatre photons avec une sensibilité permettant de rivaliser avec certaines recherches directes. Enfin, j'ai eu l'occasion de tester la nouvelle puce SAMPIC qui vise à réaliser des mesures de temps de vol avec une précision de l'ordre de quelques picosecondes grâce à un échantillonnage rapide des signaux de détecteur. Les performances de SAMPIC ont été testées à partir de signaux gaussiens produits par un générateur et par des détecteurs soumis à des impulsions infrarouges. Dans ces conditions idéales, SAMPIC permet de réaliser des mesures de temps de vol avec une résolution de l'ordre de 4 (40) ps pour les signaux générés (de détecteurs). / The LHC, which is the most powerful proton-proton collider in the world located at CERN (Switzerland), brings unprecedented opportunities to test our knowledge of the fundamental interactions at the TeV scale. In this work, two main projects have been achieved for this purpose. First, the production cross section measurement of at least two photons in the final state (pp→γγ+X) is performed with data taken at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the ATLAS detector, which is one of the multipurpose detector installed around the LHC ring. Photons are interesting probes to test the theory of strong interactions (Quantum chromodynamics or QCD) since they couple significantly to quarks and gluons but do not hadronize and thus still allow to perform high resolution measurements. The measurement of their production rate at the LHC allows to test QCD in both the perturbative and the non-perturbative domain. It is also sensitive to the emission of soft particles in the initial-state, which is tricky to handle on the theory side due to the collinear and soft divergences arising in QCD. Experimental uncertainties have been reduced by a factor 2 or more with respect to the measurements performed previously at the LHC or at the Tevatron (Fermilab, USA) and the high statistics of the ATLAS data sample at 8 TeV allows to increase significantly both the reach and the resolution of the measurement. In general, a good agreement is observed with theoretical predictions. The second project achieved in this work is dedicated to the evaluation of the light-by-light scattering potential (LbyL, γγ→γγ) for new physics searches. LbyL is an intriguing process arising from quantum fluctuations only that has never been observed directly. It involves four-photon couplings, which are shown to be highly sensitive to a broad range of new physics models at high energy such as the ones predicting the existence of extra spatial dimensions to solve the hierarchy problem currently affecting the standard model of particle physics. By taking benefit of the photon flux from the protons at the LHC, I show that one may discover anomalous four photon couplings with a sensitivity allowing to compete with several direct new physics searches. Finally, I had the opportunity to test the new SAMPIC chip which aims to perform time-of-flight measurements with a few picoseconds precision from fast samplings of detector signals. SAMPIC timing capabilities have been tested using Gaussian signals generated by a signal generator or by silicon detectors pulsed with an infrared laser. Under these ideal conditions, the SAMPIC chip has proven to be capable of timing resolutions down to 4 (40) ps with synthesized (silicon detector) signals.

Analysing fertility developments in selected European countries between 1970 and 2014 using alternative methods Abstract Transversal fertility indices as the total fertility rate are distorted by tempo effect when timing of childbearing is changing. New indices as the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate remove this distortion and give another perspective on fertility trends in countries with present tempo effect. These countries are former Eastern Bloc countries and other European countries. This thesis uses the tempo-adjusted total fertility rate and data from Human Fertility Database to describe tempo distortion in fertility level in Sweden, Norway, Czechia, Slovakia, Estonia and Lithuania in period 1970-2014. A more detailed analysis by parity in Sweden and Czechia is conducted in the same period. Negative tempo effect has been present from 1970s in Sweden and Norway and then from 90s in the countries left with fertility postponement being very widespread. The tempo effect level in Sweden and Czechia was substantial at parity one and diminishing with higher parities. Keywords: fertility, timing, level, postponement, adjusted total fertility rate, tempo effect Number of characters without blank spaces: 138 653

This diploma thesis deals with the design of the conveyor lifter with a pallet according to specified parameters. The thesis includes functional, dimensional and strength calculations, control of the most stressed part using finite element method. Part of the thesis is also an assessment of the maintenance and operation requirements of the machine. The thesis is accompanied by drawing documentation of selected assemblies.

The diploma thesis deals with construction design of stand for testing single-cylinder turbocharged engine. The first part describes principles and possibilities of measuring the performance parameters of internal combustion engines. It also analyzes the issue of measuring single-cylinder combustion engine. The main part of thesis is about construction design of stand, which describes the individual technical solutions of the general construction parts. The last chapter deals with numerical simulation, which uses modern software tools. This software helps with verification of function design.