Student Number: 0108593A - MA research report - School of Social and Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / South Africa’s diplomatic involvement in the continent and particularly in Cote d’Ivoire is the main focus of this paper. Therefore, the rationale of this dissertation is to investigate the reasons of the African Union (AU) to choose South Africa as a peace broker rather than the Cote d’Ivoire crisis as such. South Africa’s diplomatic engagement in Cote d’Ivoire in 2004 was as a result of numerous attempts by AU, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and France to find a peaceful solution to what was once the most economic and political stable country in West Africa. The crust of this paper is to ascertain reasons why the AU designated South Africa the responsibility to mediate a peace process in Cote d’Ivoire. Furthermore, What difference can South Africa really make in Cote d’Ivoire search for peace, given the failure of other third parties as well as South Africa’s ability to export its model of power-sharing in the continent. Against this backdrop, it is also vital to examine reasons why South Africa accepted to broker a peace deal in Cote d’Ivoire in November 2004 rather that two years ago when the conflict was on its early stages. In fact, this is not the first time South Africa was requested to help solve conflicts in West Africa. Interestingly, at first, South Africa refused to offer mediation in West Africa in 2003 citing reasons that it was overburdened in other peacekeeping missions in Africa. Thus, this paper will attempt to find reasons why this time around South Africa accepted the job to mediate a peace process in Cote d’Ivoire in the backyard of Nigeria.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, History of Arts, 2013 / This report examines the collecting practices of the private collector of South African art, situated in South Africa, and considers the way in which the act of collecting influences both the contemporary market and the construction of the art historical canon. The report questions the contribution made to the South African art world by collecting practices and considers what is involved in the collecting of fine art. I discuss the collector in relation to Sylvester Ogbechie’s (2010) notion of cultural brokerage; I examine notions of both public and private through the writings of Michael Warner (2002); and I consider what makes into one a collector, with reference to Thomas G. Tanselle’s (1998) text A Rationale of Collecting, while engaging several other sources. The report continues with a comparison between international collectors, with a focus on the ways in which they contribute to what becomes and remains relevant, as well as discussing some local collectors. I conclude with an examination of the way in which auction houses have played a seminal role in the establishment of the canon in South Africa, and the role of the collector in relation to this system. In summary, this paper examines the ways in which the private collector of South African art has a great influence on what is perceived as relevant to the canon, to culture and to art history.

Over the last decade, each year 2500 - 6000 Thai go to Sweden to work as berry pickers during the berry season via a regulated system of temporary work permits. Bangkok-based staffing agencies rely on the networks of local brokers to recruit workers in Thailand’s more peripheral northeastern Isan region, as part of the larger migration industry in Thailand. During the berry season, these local brokers also travel to Sweden and are part of the division of labour. Next to picking berries, their jobs can be cook, camp leader, and driver. Key concerns raised in relation to this seasonal work are precarity and vulnerability to exploitation, resulting from to the need to pay high fees to staffing agencies and a piece-rate wage-system. This thesis aims to analyze roles and positions across time and space of local Thai brokers. It does so by examining how they have come to occupy their current positions, and what their roles are in the recruitment process in Thailand and during the during the berry season in Sweden. Moreover, it investigates the interlinkages between these two roles, and how differences in remuneration and payments of fees shape precarity at the micro-scale. Based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in the Kaeng Khro district in Thailand in March 2019, this study suggests that the local brokers are industry veterans. Moreover, is suggests a large degree of variation in size and scope of local brokerage. During the berry season in Sweden, the local brokers tend to occupy positions above the regular berry pickers. Moreover, it is suggested that there is a differentiated precarity within the group of brokers, resulting from differences in the payment of wages and the need to pay fees to staffing agencies.

In this thesis, a scalable, highly available and reactive RabbitMQ cluster is implemented on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. An alternative solution was created on AWS using the CloudFormation service. These solutions are performance tested using the RabbitMQ PerfTest tool by simulating high loads with varied parameters. The test results are used to analyze the throughput and price-performance ratio for a chosen set of instances on the respective cloud platforms. How performance changes between instance family types and cloud platforms is tested and discussed. Additional conclusions are presented regarding the general performance differences in infrastructure between AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Submitted by Fabricia Fialho Reginato (fabriciar) on 2015-08-25T00:20:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ElisaThomas.pdf: 2569705 bytes, checksum: ecf5d45598c2ad9923b46e4cc9811fe4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-08-25T00:20:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ElisaThomas.pdf: 2569705 bytes, checksum: ecf5d45598c2ad9923b46e4cc9811fe4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / It has long been stated in the literature the effects of collaboration to innovation, especially regarding research and development (R&D) activities. However, these are dynamic empirical fields. Therefore theoretical approaches face constant challenges to understand and explain the new evidences. Due to the limited scope and scale of organizations to search and identify partners with complementary knowledge and resources, and to select those with potential to effectively cooperate for R&D, there is an increasing emergence of agents who provide these services in the market. Called intermediaries or brokers, they influence the interaction among organizations with the common goal of innovation. Still, the literature has reported that the intermediary may play an important set of functions for R&D projects not limited to the search of partners. This thesis is therefore mainly concerned with the influence of innovation intermediaries in the context of collaborative R&D projects, suggesting a conceptual framework on the role of intermediaries. The framework emphasises that R&D collaboration goes beyond dyadic relationships usually highlighted in the literature. The roles of intermediaries provide an important additional dimension in collaborative R&D projects. The empirical part of the thesis explored three case studies: Force for Elastomers, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil; the Orange Service Call and Reward project undertaken by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) for Orange; and the StarStream project from the University of Southampton, both in the United Kingdom. The results confirmed the influence of innovation intermediaries in most of the critical elements of a R&D project. The study advances the understanding of the influence of intermediaries for the beginning of a new project between partners. The analyses also show that intermediaries influence especially through the search for possible partners and the management of the relationship. However, the activities of research and knowledge production as well as activities of development and prototyping were not directly influenced by intermediaries. The stage after R&D, when the partners had reached positive results from activities, received a major influence from intermediaries who helped the firms to protect the inventions and to value and commercialize the new technology. Research outcomes still reveal that there is still a lack of measurements about intermediaries’ effectiveness and therefore firms involved in partnerships cannot fully evaluate their role.

<p>Validerat; 20101217 (root)</p>

Today’s software engineering and application development trend is to take advantage of reusable software. Much effort is directed towards easing the task of developing complex, distributed, network based applications with reusable components. To ease the task of the distributed systems’ developers, one can use middleware, i.e. a software layer between the operating system and the application, which handles distribution transparently. A crucial feature of distributed server applications is high availability. This implies that they must be able to continue activity even in presence of crashes. Embedding fault tolerance mechanisms in the middleware on top of which the application is running, offers the potential to reduce application code size thereby reducing developer effort. Also, outage times due to server crashes can be reduced, as failover is taken care of automatically by middleware. However, a trade-off is involved: during periods with no failures, as information has to be collected for the automatic failover, client requests are serviced with higher latency. To characterize the real benefits of middleware, this trade-off needs to be studied. Unfortunately, to this date, few trade-off studies involving middleware that supports fault tolerance with application to realistic cases have been conducted. The contributions of the thesis are twofold: (1) insights based on empirical studies and (2) a theoretical analysis of components in a middleware equipped with fault tolerance mechanisms. In connection with part (1) the thesis describes detailed implementation of two platforms based on CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) with fault tolerance capabilities: one built by following the FT-CORBA standard, where only application failures are taken care of, and a second obtained by implementing an algorithm that ensures uniform treatment of infrastructure and application failures. Based on empirical studies of the availability/performance trade-off, several insights were gained, including the benefits and drawbacks of the two infrastructures. The studies were performed using a realistic (telecommunication) applicationset up to run on top of both extended middleware platforms. Further, the thesis proposes a technique to improve performance in the FT-CORBA based middleware by exploiting application knowledge; to enrich application code with fault tolerance mechanisms we use aspect-oriented programming. In connection with part (2) the thesis models elements of an FT-CORBA like architecture mathematically, in particular by using queuing theory. The model is then used to study the relation between different parameters. This provides the means to configure one middleware parameter, namely the checkpointing interval, leading to maximal availability or minimal response time.

<p>The study deals with real estate transaction for one-family houses and aims to compare and analyse the transaction processes and costs in six countries: Sweden, Finland, Norway, Poland, England and USA. The study identifies the main features of the normal transaction in each country and tries to measure the costs of the process. A basic description of the role of the real estate agent/broker is presented, referring among others to legal role of the agent/broker and the requirements for being allowed to work as real estate agent/broker. </p><p>The conclusions of the study are that transaction processes differ considerably between the countries and that transaction costs vary. Only in Sweden and Norway, can and may a real estate broker carry out the whole transaction while in Poland, England and USA either a notary, an attorney or an otherwise authorized person is also required in the process. In Finland a purchase witness is required to confirm the purchase. It is difficult to arrange the countries in a clear way according to their rules, because even if a group of countries resemble each other in some aspects, they differ in others. </p><p>There is no clear connection between how large part a real estate broker plays in the process and the broker’s education level. </p><p>The total transaction costs excluding taxes vary from approx. 3-3.5 % of selling price in Norway and Sweden and up to approx. 8-8.5 % of selling price in USA and Poland. The transaction cost is, for example, lower if the recording system is well arranged, if a real estate broker has a bigger part in the process and the conveyancer, the professional who assists in the legal transfer of property, is impartial. The cost can also, but not always, be lower if only one real estate broker works with one commission and if the real estate broker is impartial, i.e. is enjoined to assist both parts in the process.</p><p>In the countries where a real estate broker has a higher level of education and plays bigger part in the process, the estate agents remuneration is not higher compared to other studied countries</p>

Κεντρικό αντικείμενο αυτής της Διδακτορικής Διατριβής αποτελεί η μελέτη του συνδυασμού δύο εκ των βασικότερων εξελίξεων που σχετίζονται με το επίπεδο του IP πρωτοκόλλου στο Internet: της δυνατότητας για την παροχή εγγυήσεων ποιότητας (Quality of Service) σε τμήμα της συνολικής κίνησης που διακινείται μέσα από τα IP δίκτυα, καθώς και της ανάγκης αναβάθμισης του IPv4 πρωτοκόλλου στο IPv6. Επίσης αντικείμενο της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η ανάπτυξη μηχανισμών και αλγορίθμων για την αποδοτική διαχείριση των πόρων, τον όσο το δυνατόν δίκαιο καταμερισμό της ποιότητας υπηρεσίας, καθώς και τη δυνατότητα συνεργασίας και διαλειτουργικότητας μεταξύ διαφορετικών αυτόνομων δικτυακών τμημάτων με αυτοματοποιημένο τρόπο (χωρίς δηλαδή να χρειάζεται η παρέμβαση ενός ανθρώπου διαχειριστή στις περισσότερες περιπτώσεις). Για το σκοπό αυτό έχουν προταθεί διάφορες προσεγγίσεις όσον αφορά μεσίτες εύρους ζώνης, οι οποίες μελετώνται στην εργασία αυτή, ενώ προτείνονται αλγόριθμοι και μηχανισμοί για τη βελτίωση της λειτουργίας και της απόδοσής τους. Το IPv4 είχε τη δυνατότητα υλοποίησης μηχανισμών QoS στο επίπεδο δικτύου με τη χρήση του πεδίου TOS (Type Of Service). Στην πράξη όμως το πεδίο αυτό έμεινε σε μεγάλο βαθμό ανεκμετάλλευτο. Το IPv6 επεκτείνει και βελτιώνει την ιδέα αυτή, παρέχοντας δύο νέα πεδία στην στάνταρ επικεφαλίδα, τα Traffic Class και Flow Label, τα οποία μπορούν να χρησιμοποιηθούν προς αυτήν την κατεύθυνση. Η χρήση των πεδίων αυτών, όπως και γενικότερα η χρήση του IPv6 βρίσκονται ακόμα σε πειραματικό επίπεδο. Καθώς όμως το IPv6 περνάει σιγά-σιγά στο προσκήνιο και ετοιμάζεται να υποκαταστήσει το κυρίαρχο έως τώρα IPv4, παρουσιάζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον η διερεύνηση του τρόπου με τον οποίο θα αξιοποιηθούν πρακτικά οι QoS δυνατότητες που προσφέρει το IPv6. Μία σημαντική παράμετρος της υποστήριξης QoS Μηχανισμών από άκρο σε άκρο είναι η συνεργασία μεταξύ διαφορετικών αυτόνομων τμημάτων (domains) που απαιτείται προκειμένου η κίνηση να υφίσταται προνομιακή μεταχείριση καθ’ όλη τη διαδρομή της και να της παρέχονται οι αναγκαίες εγγυήσεις ποιότητας. Η διαπραγμάτευση της συνεργασίας αυτής είναι σαφές ότι πρέπει να είναι όσο το δυνατόν αυτοματοποιημένη για να μπορούν τέτοιου είδους υπηρεσίες να γνωρίσουν ευρύτερη διάδοση. Για το σκοπό αυτό έχει από το RFC 2638 της IETF οριστεί η μονάδα του Bandwidth Broker (μεσίτης εύρους ζώνης). Ελέγχει το δικτυακό φόρτο αποδεχόμενη ή απορρίπτοντας αιτήματα για συγκεκριμένο bandwidth με εγγυήσεις QoS. Οι Bandwidth Brokers χρειάζεται να εγκαθιδρύσουν σχέσεις περιορισμένης εμπιστοσύνης με τις αντίστοιχες μονάδες στα γειτονικά domains, αντίθετα με άλλες αρχιτεκτονικές που απαιτούν τον καθορισμό των χαρακτηριστικών μιας ροής στους δρομολογητές κατά μήκος του από άκρο σε άκρο μονοπατιού. Επομένως η αρχιτεκτονική του Bandwidth Broker δίνει τη δυνατότητα να κρατηθεί η πληροφορία στο επίπεδο του διαχειριστικού domain, αντί να πρέπει να κρατηθεί σε κάθε δρομολογητή, και η DiffServ αρχιτεκτονική δίνει τη δυνατότητα να περιοριστεί η πληροφορία αυτή μόνο για τους ακραίους δρομολογητές κάθε domain. Στα πλαίσια της εργασίας αυτής ασχοληθήκαμε επίσης με τη μονάδα ελέγχου αποδοχής ενός Bandwidth Broker. Προτείνεται και αξιολογείται ένας προσαρμοστικός αλγόριθμος για αιτήματα κράτησης πόρων που καταφτάνουν νωρίτερα από τον καθορισμένο χρόνο έναρξης της κράτησης. Το γεγονός αυτό επιτρέπει στον αλγόριθμο να συγκεντρώνει ένα σύνολο από πολλαπλά αιτήματα και να κάνει καλύτερη αξιοποίηση του δικτύου, χρησιμοποιώντας την υπάρχουσα βιβλιογραφία για προβλήματα χρονοδρομολόγησης. Η σημασία της παρακολούθησης και της προσαρμογής της υπολογιστικής επιβάρυνσης για τον Bandwidth Broker φαίνεται σαφέστερα όταν υπάρχει μεγάλος ρυθμός άφιξης αιτημάτων, ενώ το ζητούμενο bandwidth για κάθε κράτηση είναι μικρό, όπως στην περίπτωση πολλαπλών VoIP αιτημάτων σε μία σύνδεση υψηλού bandwidth. / The main goal of this dissertation is the study of two of the main developments related to the Internet network layer: the provisioning of Quality of Service guarantees to part of the total traffic traversing ΙΡ networks, as well as the need for upgrading the IPv4 protocol to IPv6. Also goal of this dissertation is the development of mechanisms and algorithms for the effective administration of resources, the best possible fairness in distributing the quality of service, and the possibility of cooperation and interoperability between different domains in an automated way (without the need for human intervention in most cases). For this reason, a number of approaches have been proposed related to Bandwidth Brokers. These approaches are studied in this dissertation, while new algorithms and mechanisms are proposed for the improvement of their operation and performance. IPv4 was capable of supporting QoS mechanisms at the network layer using the TOS field (Type Of Service). IPv6 advances and improves on this idea, by supplying two new fields in the standard header, called Traffic Class and Flow Label, which can be used for this purpose. The usage of these fields, as well as the usage of IPv6 is still at an early stage. However, while IPv6 comes to the foreground and becomes mature enough to replace the dominant IPv4, it is especially interesting to investigate the way that IPv6 QoS capabilities are practically going to be exploited. An important parameter for supporting end-to-end QoS mechanisms is the interaction between multiple domains so that the designated traffic is subjected to preferential treatment along the whole path. The negotiation of this interaction clearly has to be as much automated as possible, if such services are to be widely supported. For this reason, RFC 2638 from IETF has defined the Bandwidth Broker entity. According to the RFC definition, it controls the network load by accepting or rejecting requests for specific bandwidth with QoS guarantees. Bandwidth Brokers only need to establish relationships of limited trust with their peers in adjacent domains, unlike schemes that require the setting of flow specifications in routers throughout an end-to-end path. In practical technical terms, the Bandwidth Broker architecture makes it possible to keep state on an administrative domain basis, rather than at every router and the service definitions of Premium and Assured service make it possible to confine per flow state to just the leaf routers. In the framework of this dissertation we have also studied the admission control module of a Bandwidth Broker. An adaptive algorithm for advance resource reservation requests is proposed and evaluated. The algorithm gathers and evaluates multiple requests in order to better utilize the network, using previous work on timescheduling problems. The importance of monitoring and adapting the computational overhead for the Bandwidth Broker is clearly demonstrated for high request arrival rates and small bandwidth requests, such as the case for multiple VoIP requests that use a high bandwidth link.

Titel: Beslutsfattande och Interpersonell påverkan Nivå: Examensarbete företagsekonomi, 15 hp Syfte: Vårt intresse för etiskt beslutsfattande väcktes ur uppfattningen om att fastighetsmäklare generellt sett har lågt förtroende bland allmänheten samt att försäljares etiska snedsteg ofta täcker tidningars förstasidor. Syftet med studien är att skapa ökad förståelse för hur den interpersonella dimensionen påverkar det etiska beslutsfattandet hos medarbetare inom säljorganisationer. Studiens forskningsfrågor har varit följande: 1. Kan oetiskt beteende påverka de andra medarbetarna? 2. Vilken av de etiska teorierna egoism, utilitarism eller dentologi/pliktetik är den mest centrala när det kommer till beslutsfattande för individer? 3. På vilket sätt påverkar en rättvis arbetsmiljö medarbetarnas beslutsfattning vid etiska dilemman? Metod: Vår Studie baseras på en deduktiv forskningsansats och en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Vi har utfört semistrukturerade intervjuer med tio fastighetsmäklare från fyra olika svenska städer där vi använt oss av en operationaliserad intervjuguide. Vårt empiriska material har sedan analyserats med en analysmetod av Sarah Philipson, ”A well grounded theory”. Resultat &amp; slutsats: Studien visar att den interpersonella dimensionen på ett fastighetsmäklarkontor har en stark påverkan på beslutsfattningen vid ett etiskt dilemma. Detta då merparten av de tillfrågade mäklarna främst bollade frågor med varandra, stämde av med sina kollegor, värderade och uppskattade kollegornas åsikter samt drog lärdom av varandra vid en uppkommen situation. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Eftersom vår studie visat att medarbetarnas beteende, ”peer behavior”, varit av vikt vid den enskildes beslutsfattande så vore det intressesant att studera denna faktor allt närmre genom att förslagsvis studera chefers medvetenhet om betydelsen av medarbetarnas beteende på arbetsplatsen. Möjligtvis för att utveckla rekryteringsåtgärder/program för att säkerställa etiskt beteende inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen genom att belysa vilka medarbetaregenskaper som är betydelsefulla för att höja kvalitén på den etiska beslutsfattningen på ett kontor. Avslutningsvis vill vi uppmuntra till vidare forskning inom både den strukturella dimensionen och den interpersonella dimensionen och en jämförelse mellan dessa för att öka förståelsen kring etisk beslutsfattning. Uppsatsens bidrag: Vår studie bidrar med ökad förståelse för hur den interpersonella dimensionen påverkar det etiska beslutsfattandet hos medarbetare inom fastighetsmäklarföretag. Vi har skapat en modell som beskriver sambandet mellan interpersonellt etiskt klimat och etiskt beslutsfattande inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen. Nyckelord: Etik, Etiskt klimat, Etiskt beslutsfattande, interpersonella dimensionen, fastighetsmäklare.