The city of Pretoria can be likened to a blanket stretched thin, where previously urban programs shift to the expanding periphery leaving gaps in the city fabric. It is essential to investigate ways in which these urban “left overs” can be re-imagined within the contemporary context. This complex urban condition is investigated with the focus on conservation of abandoned buildings of heritage significance. In South Africa, state funding cannot be relied upon for conservation of individual buildings. Thus the conservation of leftover and abandoned heritage buildings should happen not through singular museum projects but through the everyday usefulness of the building. The role of art and the artist has long been linked to the reuse of buildings which have become difficult to inhabit in conventional ways. Thus the introduction of cultural programs to derelict heritage sites and “left over” spaces is pertinent to their reuse. One such site is the Capitol theatre in the Pretoria CBD. It is undoubtedly a place of cultural richness and expression, having been a place of daily gathering as well as formal entertainment throughout its history. It is a natural point in which to reintroduce culture into an extended public realm at the heart of the city. Originally a space of introverted and exclusive cultural expression, curated cultural artifacts (films and occasional shows) were displayed to a limited audience in a highly internalised experience. However, it is proposed that this condition be inverted through external display of the processes of cultural production on the exterior of the theatre. The intention is to broaden the sphere of cultural influence into the public realm of the city and simultaneously invite the existing communities to engage with the building. Thus the focus shifts from internal event space to external production space which becomes part of the public everyday experience. Reviving the Capitol The Capitol Theatre complex was never completed and no exterior facade was ever design for the auditorium. This creates the opportunity for a new inhabitable facade to be designed which fulfills the role of both a supportive and expressive element. The new element incorporates spaces where people and processes of cultural production are expressed externally while curated cultural artifacts and events remain housed in the auditorium. Ultimately the concept is one of support. The physical support of a failing structure being the starting point which necessitates an intervention; the functional support which allows the building to become useful again in a contemporary context with new cultural meaning; and the social support of the everyday rituals which make up the daily cultural experiences through the extension of the sphere of cultural influence of the Capitol Theatre. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Jeffery R. Williams / The economic feasibility of adding a pistachio roasting facility to the current operations of Tularosa Pistachio Groves (TG) was examined. A facility that roasts and processes 200,000 pounds of pistachio nuts was found to be the most economically viable for the available product grown by (TG) and other small growers in this area. This size facility optimizes the production capacity of the equipment needed for a small grower/processor and fully utilizes a fulltime skilled labor pool needed for the operation. Lower production levels utilize the same equipment on an intermittent schedule. Although operating costs are less when processing fewer pistachio nuts, the negative cash flows during the early period of the project are significant and make the lower production levels less financially viable. The primary reason the lower production quantities are less attractive is because the initial capital investment produced lower cash incomes in the early years of operation. Additional cash is needed for the operation costs, and principal and interest payments. Achieving maximum production to utilize the capacity of the facility sooner makes the project more financially feasible.

The point of departure of this thesis is regeneration and how it is carried out in two countries, USA and Sweden. Urban regeneration, according to the used definition, seek either to support vulnerable communities by redistributing resources so that they can take advantage of them, or to promote growth and development and through this improve the situation for those in need. The thesis investigates and compare how the projects and their actors formulate, relate to and strive for a better use and higher value of space. The comparison will help to find lessons to be learned across the contexts. The main questions to be answered are: What elements of the projects or programs strive for a higher value of space in a similar way and what does it in different ways? What lessons for future regeneration can be learned from the comparisons? The comparison is based on the assumption that regeneration schemes can learn from one another across contexts and that this is a constructive way to improve knowledge of regeneration. Three cases are investigated. Townhomes on Capitol Hill and Capper Carrollsburg in Washington D.C., USA, are regenerated under the federal HOPE VI program that targets public housing areas. Gårdsten in Gothenburg, Sweden, is regenerated according to the aim of the municipality to decrease segregation. The comparison is made over five themes, organization, public participation, physical regeneration, social programs and social mix. The thesis highlights differences and similarities in the regeneration approaches and show how the cases aim to increase social, cultural and economic capital. The conclusion is that regeneration in USA could benefit from the way of regeneration according to the Swedish case with more participation and a long term focus of the process, and regeneration in Sweden could benefit from a greater focus on design and architecture as in the U.S. cases.

Elevation, longitudinal profile, and Schmidt hammer data indicate that strath terraces (specifically the lower elevation terraces) mapped in the Fremont River drainage of Capitol Reef National Park are correlative to the terraces of the smaller Pleasant Creek drainage located approximately ten miles to the south. This correlation suggests that drainage development in this area of the Colorado Plateau was strongly dependent upon a regional-scale forcing mechanism (e.g. climate) rather than strictly independent basin-scale processes. Elevations of mapped strath terraces and their associated black volcanic boulder deposits were calculated from geologic maps, Digital Elevation Models (DEM), and Digital Orthophoto Quadrangles of the Fruita and Golden Throne Quadrangles, Wayne and Garfield Counties, Utah. Terraces in both drainages were placed into twenty foot elevation bins and then gathered into larger terrace levels based upon population breaks and the degree of weathering as seen from Schmidt hammer hardness data. Comparison of the two datasets indicate that the two lowest terrace levels of the Fremont River compare well with the two terrace levels of Pleasant Creek both in elevation above the present stream bed and in Schmidt hammer hardness measurements. Our data demonstrate that the Fremont River drainage is likely much older than the smaller Pleasant Creek drainage. Further, correlative terrace data strongly suggests that glacial-interglacial climate forcing played a dominant role in the landscape evolution of both drainages and by inference, the broader Colorado Plateau. Terrace elevation data were compared with recently published cosmogenic ages for several terrace deposits located within the Fremont River drainage. This comparison provides compelling evidence that highest concentrations of preserved terraces may be time correlative with discrete isotopic stages associated with glacial maximum and/or deglacial conditions. Finally, our data also demonstrate that in this area of the Colorado Plateau incision rates are on the order of ~60 to 85 cm/ka, which is on the high end of reported rates from other researchers.

The diploma work deals with the history of the male Augustinian order in Bohemia and Moravia, i.e. both canons and eremites. The main concern of the first part is the personality of St. Augustin and general history of the order in Europe. The history of the order in Bohemia and Moravia follows and at the end the history of individual Bohemian and Moravian cloisters is elaborated.

Google Translate’s mission is “to enable everyone, everywhere, to understand the world and express themselves across languages” (Pitman, 2021). But are algorithms capable of leading us beyond the translation of the word toward an understanding of the world? Computational linguistics research has been interested in assessing this kind of real-world effects of technology and invited other disciplines to join their effort. With this purpose, this study examines the ways the algorithmic agency (Maly, 2022) elicits a ‘movement of meanings’ (Silverstone, 1999) when mediating news reports from English to Portuguese – the official language of Brazil, the country with the greatest use of Google Translate (Turovsky, 2016). For that, it investigates how algorithms convert appraisal and semiotic elements that carry ideological stances. The bilingual sample consists of six news articles on the U.S. Capitol attack published in U.S. outlets, two each of right, center, and left political leaning, along with their translations obtained through Google Translate. The analytical framework encompasses Fairclough’s (2003) CDA methods that allow an exploration of how discourses embedded in these texts represent the social phenomena that are being depicted. This lens is complemented by the Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005) to investigate how value positions are constructed within texts through evaluation. A third analytical tool is necessary to engage with the ways in which meanings are moved from source to target texts. For this, van Leeuwen’s (2008) notion of recontextualization affords an assessment of the processes inherent to translations. The analysis showed that algorithms neutralized appraisal through lexical choices, changed semiotic elements through recontextualization, and blurred stances by standardizing the target language. The paper, thus, concludes that Google Translate constructed power by renaming reality and enacted it by reshaping evaluations, advancing research that seeks to examine algorithms’ impacts on digital discourse. Speaking from the epistemic locus of the Global South, this thesis proposes a critical reflection on the ideologies concealed by the self-proclaimed discourse of the universality of digital technologies.

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During the early parts of the Civil War authorities created two distinct prisons, Old Capitol in Washington, D.C. and Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia. These institutions were reactions to an increase in prisoners of state. Confederate and Union officials established these prisons for this particular group: the disloyal. Although both structures held prisoners of war, the most vocal and prominent group of prisoners were civilians. The variety and character of both of these prisons are entirely unique in the annals of the war. The conglomeration of the young and old, rich and poor, male and female forced atypical social settings and class antagonisms. For the most part, governmental authorities took added interest in Old Capitol and Castle Thunder because of the distinctive characters of these prisons and the concurrent feelings that civil liberties should be preserved. Under constant scrutiny, both Congresses, along with prison and military officials, attempted to make sure the prisoners in these two capitals received good treatment. Inmates at these two prisons did receive above average treatment. In some instances, life in these institutions did not resemble incarceration. The heightened awareness of officials and prison superintendents were the primary reason for this good treatment. Yet officials in each state understood that these treasonous persons could be dangerous to each respective government. These feelings were not unwarranted, because many deserved confinement and punishment for their traitorous ways. / Master of Arts

The Texas Constitution of 1876 set aside three million acres of Texas public land in exchange for construction of the monumental red granite Capitol that continues to house Texas state government today. The Capitol project and the land went to an Illinois syndicate led by men influential in business and politics. Austin's statehouse is a recognizable symbol of Texas around the world. So too, the massive Panhandle tract given in exchange -- what became the "fabulous" XIT Ranch -- has come to, for many, symbolize Texas and its role in the nineteenth century cattle boom. After finding sales prospects for the land, known as the Capitol Reservation, weak at the time, backed by British capital, the Illinois group, often called the Capitol Syndicate, turned their efforts to cattle ranching to satisfy investors until demand for the land increased. The operation included a satellite ranch in Montana to which two-year-old steers from Texas were sent for fattening, often "over the trail" on a route increasingly blocked by people and settlement. Rather than a study focused on ranching operations on the ground -- the roundups, the cattle drives, the cowboys -- this instead uncovers the business and political side of the Syndicate's ranching operation, headquartered in Chicago. The operation of the XIT Ranch looked more like other Gilded Age businesses employing armies of clerks, bookkeepers, and secretaries instead of how great western ranches have been portrayed for years in popular literature and media. The XIT Ranch existed from 1885 to 1912, yet from Texas to Montana the operation left a deep imprint on community culture and historical memory.

Riedel shear zones are geometric fault patterns commonly associated with strike-slip fault systems. The progressive evolution of natural Riedel shear zones within the Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah is interpreted from the spatial evolution of small-scale, incipient Proto-Riedel Zones (PRZs) to better-developed Riedel shear zones using field mapping and three-dimensional digital modeling. PRZs nucleate as a tabular zone of localized shearing marked by en èchelon deformation bands, each of which is no more than a few mm wide and tens of cm long, and oriented at 55° - 85° to the trend of the zone. With increasing strain, deformation bands and sedimentary markers are sheared ductily through granular flow and assume a sigmoidal form. The temporal and spatial evolution of bands comprising a Riedel shear zone suggests that PRZs nucleate as transitional-compactional deformation bands under localized, supra-lithostatic fluid pressure. Subsequent bands develop under modified regional stresses as conjugate shear fractures within the strain- hardened axis of the PRZ. These antithetic driven systems are not compatible with traditional synthetic driven models of Riedel shear zones. Unlike most synthetic driven examples, these antithetic driven systems are not controlled by preexisting "basement" structures, thus their geometries reflect a primary propagation or secondary passive deformation mechanism.