South Africa is one of the countries with the highest burden of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) in the world. The fact that adult patients diagnosed with TB frequently do not attend their primary healthcare clinics after discharge from hospital for continued treatment remains a challenge for public health in South Africa. This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and observations explored the experiences of patients, their families, healthcare workers and policy makers, with continuity of TB care following diagnosis in hospital. The key research question was what factors were shaping patients’ attendance at primary healthcare clinics following TB diagnosis and start of treatment in tertiary and district hospitals. Sub questions were: how did patients diagnosed with TB interpret and act upon their diagnosis and treatment at the tertiary/district hospital? What roles did patients play in the discharge process? What were their home circumstances and experiences at the clinics they were referred to, regarding their registration and follow-up plan? What were the perceptions of patients, healthcare workers and policy makers on what influences patients’ attendance/non-attendance at clinics? The objective of this study was to contribute to our understanding of patients’ experiences and perceptions of treatment of TB and how services to patients could be improved to enhance better continuity of care. I drew on a three-fold theoretical framework: patient-centred care, Foucault’s concept of the 'medical gaze’ and social determinants of health. My study built upon previous and ongoing research on the topic of continuity of care for TB in Cape Town. I argued that problems in the provision of TB services to hospital patients could be understood as failures of the services at the hospital to achieve some of the core components of patient-centered care. Furthermore, I argued that better systems for following-up patients from the hospitals to their homes and clinics would provide more understanding of the challenges patients faced when they have been referred from a tertiary or district hospital to continue with their treatment. Insights gained from qualitatively following patients from diagnosis to discharge and their home circumstances helped to better understand the problem South Africa faced with continuity of care for TB treatment.

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This thesis imagines a group of people who sought a way of living that considers the thousands of generations who will come after them. They set out to build a city that embraces natural cycles and spatial limits in the pursuit of longevity. The result is an eutopia, a good place, where individual mortality is the animus of community continuity. / Master of Architecture / This thesis imagines a group of people who sought a way of living that considers the thousands of generations who will come after them. They set out to build a city that embraces natural cycles and spatial limits in the pursuit of longevity. The result is an eutopia, a good place, where individual mortality is the animus of community continuity.

The sudden and popular rise of comic book during the last decade has seen many new readers, filmgoers, and television watchers attempt to navigate the world of comics amid a staggering influx of content produced by both Marvel and DC Comics. This process of navigation is, of course, not without precedence: a similar phenomenon occurred during the 1980s in which new readers turned to the genre as superhero comics began to saturate the cultural consciousness after a long period of absence. And, just as was the case during that time, such a navigation can prove difficult as a veritable network of information—much of which is contradictory—vies for attention. How does one navigate a medium to which comic books, graphic novels, movies, television shows, and other supplementary forms all contribute? Such a task has, in the past, proven to be near insurmountable. DC Comics is no stranger to this predicament: during the second boom of superhero comics, it sought to untangle the canonical mess made by decades of overlapping history to the groundbreaking limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, released to streamline its then collection of stories by essentially nullifying its previous canon and starting from scratch. But in its attempt to further impose order on their sprawling body of work, the monolithic comic books company also further solidified a perception of comics as a conservative and retrogressive medium. This thesis will explore Crisis on Infinite Earths as a means of revealing its status as a lens through which the traditionalist nature of comics can be understood. By examining Crisis through three crucial lenses—narrative, historical, and economic—I will argue that the text ostensibly designed to push past the canonical maze erected by its predecessors had the unintended consequence of actually rooting it further in its own history. / Master of Arts / This thesis examines DC Comics’ landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths series to better understand the comics as a both a discrete text and a piece of a larger narrative, historical, and bureaucratic canon. By examining Crisis as a narrative, historical, and economic product, I hope to shed light on how the text, while progressive in its desire to reshape DC’s canon, ultimately proved to be counterproductive.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020 / The research was focused on business continuity management as a key discipline towards building a resilient Western Cape Government. It provided an opportunity to identify existing business continuity processes to determine the level of preparedness of the Western Cape Government to ensure continued business due to a disruption. The inability of the public sector to manage and facilitate sound business continuity processes in anticipation of disruptive events have placed it in a position where it would be unable to deliver services to citizens and stakeholders. As the current business environment was continuously evolving, Government as an organization was therefore not immune to change and disruption, whether generated internally or externally. For government to be resilient it required the holistic management of risk but also the ability to adapt and respond to change with a limited impact on the delivery of services. Business Continuity was the core to building and improving organizational resilience. It had been a proven methodology that organizations should embrace as part of a holistic approach to the management of risks and threats. Legislation and/or policies have been drafted for the public sector to guide with the management of risks. As an organ of state and part of the public sector the Western Cape Government was therefore obliged to manage risks in a way that ensured that government was able to continue to render a service both internally and externally with as little impact as possible. Business continuity management identified the priorities of an organization as well as prepared solutions to address disruptive threats. The aim of the study was the exploration of the state of business continuity within the Western Cape Government. The objectives of the study were to: Identify current business continuity processes; Evaluate current business continuity processes; Critically analyse existing business continuity documentation; and Identify the links between business continuity and resilience. The research questions were focused on getting departments to express how business continuity was facilitated; clarity in respect of processes; input source of business continuity documentation; as well as determining whether departments acknowledged the benefits of having business continuity management towards building a resilient Western Cape Government. Previous work reinforced the importance of having sound business continuity processes in place. From the literature it would appear that business continuity in the public sector was fairly new and developmental in nature. Previous work also recognized that each and every organization was unique and as such the process should be aligned with the core functions and/or mandates afforded by legislation and/or policies. The research approach deemed most appropriate for this particular study was the Interpretivist approach. Not only was this approach value laden but it allowed for the exploration of the theory and obtaining of rich in-depth data from the participants. It also allowed for the contextualization of the problem as it related to the business continuity processes within the Western Cape Government. The research method was qualitative using interviews and document analysis as the most suited research instruments to elicit qualitative data required to render the research process as valid. It was concluded that having sound business continuity processes in place would greatly support organizations with the management of disruptions. Business continuity should be a proactive plan to avoid and mitigate risk associated with disruption of operations and needed to be managed in a way that objectives were met. Further to this it should be noted that the resilience maturity of the Western Cape Government remained reactive and concerted efforts towards becoming proactive should be considered.

This study explored the design and development of the knowledge harvesting and knowledge management components of a comprehensive tool which incorporates characteristics of continuity management, knowledge harvesting, and knowledge management. While tools exist to support restoring continuity in the aftermath of a disastrous event, little is done to address maintaining continuity through the non-disastrous events. Employee separation is one such non-disastrous event, and one that all organizations face. Knowledge harvesting is suggested as a means to address collecting the knowledge of employees within an organization so that it can be reused by new employees or temporary replacements. The combination of the attributes of continuity management, knowledge harvesting, and knowledge management resulted in five characteristics of a comprehensive tool. These characteristics were operationalized in the design of a comprehensive tool and provided contextual information for the design and development of the knowledge harvesting and knowledge management components. Findings of the evaluations of the components indicated that the developed components complied with the design-based specifications. Lessons learned from the implementation and evaluations of the knowledge harvesting component suggest that the right questions for the knowledge harvesting process should be determined by the organization based on the need for the information and the nature of the information needed; that the tool should incorporate terminology, prompting questions, and a structure that are right for the organization and that the users will understand; that users may benefit from time to respond and having options to submit responses in various formats; and that users may benefit from encouragement and support throughout the knowledge harvesting process. Lessons learned from the implementation and evaluations of the knowledge management components suggest that the ability to provide a prompt follow-up to a user's response could improve the effectiveness of the tool; that the structure and development of the database requires precision; and that while the database must be precise, it must also be flexible and accurately accommodate changes to the content. / Ph. D.

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The intention of most film editing is to create the impression of continuous action (“continuity”) by presenting discontinuous visual information. The techniques used to achieve this, the continuity editing rules, are well established yet there exists no understanding of their cognitive foundations. This thesis attempts to correct this oversight by proposing that “continuity” is actually what perceptual and developmental psychologists refer to as existence constancy (Michotte, 1955): “the experience that objects persist through space and time despite the fact that their presence in the visual field may be discontinuous” (Butterworth, 1991). The main conclusion of this thesis is that continuity editing ensures existence constancy by creating conditions under which a) the visual disruption created by the cut does not capture attention, b) existence constancy is assumed, and c) expectations associated with existence constancy are accommodated after the cut. Continuity editing rules are shown to identify natural periods of attention withdrawal that can be used to hide cuts. A reaction time study shows that one such period, a saccadic eye movement, occurs when an object is occluded by the screen edge. This occlusion has the potential to create existence constancy across the cut. After the cut, the object only has to appear when and where it is expected for it to be perceived as continuing to exist. This spatiotemporal information is stored in a visual index (Pylyshyn, 1989). Changes to the object’s features (stored in an object file; Kahneman, Treisman, & Gibbs, 1992), such as those caused by the cut, will go unnoticed. A duration estimation study shows that these spatiotemporal expectations distort due to the attention withdrawal. Continuity editing rules show evidence of accommodating these distortions to create perceived continuity from discontinuous visual information. The outcome of this thesis is a scientific understanding of filmic continuity. This permits filmmakers greater awareness of the perceptual consequences of their editing decisions. It also informs cognitive scientists of the potential of film as an analogue for real-world perception that exposes the assumptions, limitations, and constraints imposed upon our perception of reality.

The question of cultural continuity or the appearance of a new culture in the Levant in the period from the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age has been strongly debated in Near Eastern studies. Proponents of cultural change argue that a new type of building, the four-room house is a strong indicator of a new population moving in, despite compelling evidence that this type of house had precedents in earlier periods.<p> A more productive approach to the issue of cultural change or continuity lies in the examination of not only the physical structures, but also the use of space within them, since the organization of domestic activity is at a basic level culturally determined. This study proposes a method for such examination, through the creation of a typology of rooms and the analysis of the distribution of artefacts and installations within different types of space to determine probable activities within a sample of houses from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. By comparing and contrasting uses of space in Late Bronze and Early Iron Age domestic structures, one should be able to add to the lines of evidence for determining whether or not there was cultural continuity in the transitional period from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. The outcomes of this study pointed to cultural continuity.