The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of small group communication, investigate to what extent small groups communicate within their minibusiness areas within a mining group. The communication role and the influence it has within an organisation, and what structure it takes within the bigger scheme of the organization were also investigated. Many people and organisations form small groups to perform certain jobs, but they do not have a clear understanding of what constitutes a group, essentially what is it that a group can and cannot do. Small groups are always present and employees are always members of one or more small groups. Establishing a precise definition of a small group that is generally accepted by everyone has proven to be a challenge as most scholars come up with different interpretations and definitions of small group communication. A quantitative research method was used for this study as it was deemed suitable for this type of research, but one of the shortcomings of this method is that the data obtained through this method of research is not suitable for generalisations to any population. It is therefore emphasized that it is not the objective of this research to generalise the results of the study, but that it is applicable to the small group communication within the mining group investigated. The sample and data collected were small. A total of 150 questionnaires were sent to two De Beers' mines, Venetia Mine in Limpopo Province and Voorspoed Mine in the Free State Province, requesting employees via their supervisors and line managers to participate in the small group communications survey. The survey revolved mainly around the company's overview of its Continuous Business Improvement (CBI) business system which involved small group initiatives and communication. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of small group communication, investigate to what extent small groups communicate within their minibusiness areas within a mining group. The communication role and the influence it has within an organisation, and what structure it takes within the bigger scheme of the organization were also investigated. Many people and organisations form small groups to perform certain jobs, but they do not have a clear understanding of what constitutes a group, essentially what is it that a group can and cannot do. Small groups are always present and employees are always members of one or more small groups. Establishing a precise definition of a small group that is generally accepted by everyone has proven to be a challenge as most scholars come up with different interpretations and definitions of small group communication. A quantitative research method was used for this study as it was deemed suitable for this type of research, but one of the shortcomings of this method is that the data obtained through this method of research is not suitable for generalisations to any population. It is therefore emphasized that it is not the objective of this research to generalise the results of the study, but that it is applicable to the small group communication within the mining group investigated. The sample and data collected were small. A total of 150 questionnaires were sent to two De Beers' mines, Venetia Mine in Limpopo Province and Voorspoed Mine in the Free State Province, requesting employees via their supervisors and line managers to participate in the small group communications survey. The survey revolved mainly around the company's overview of its Continuous Business Improvement (CBI) business system which involved small group initiatives and communication. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Ten reinforced-concrete continuous deep beams with openings were tested to failure. The main variables investigated were the shear span-to-overall depth ratio, and the size and location of openings. Two failure modes influenced by the size and location of web openings regardless of the shear span-to-overall depth ratio were observed. The normalised load capacity of beams having a web opening area ratio of 0.025 within exterior shear spans was approximately similar to that of their companion solid beams. Continuous deep beams having web openings within interior shear spans exhibited a higher load capacity reduction with the increase of the opening size, similar to simply supported deep beams with web openings. Formulae based on the upper bound analysis of the plasticity theory were proposed to predict the load capacity of continuous deep beams with web openings. Comparisons between the measured and predicted load capacities showed a good agreement.

This thesis proposes a bearing condition monitoring system using acceleration and acoustic emission (AE) signals. Bearings are perhaps the most omnipresent machine elements and their condition is often critical to the success of an operation or process. Consequently, there is a great need for a timely knowledge of the health status of bearings. Generally, bearing monitoring is the prediction of the component's health or status based on signal detection, processing and classification in order to identify the causes of the problem. As the monitoring system uses both acceleration and acoustic emission signals, it is considered a multi-sensor system. This has the advantage that not only do the two sensors provide increased reliability they also permit a larger range of rotating speeds to be monitored successfully. When more than one sensor is used, if one fails to work properly the other is still able to provide adequate monitoring. Vibration techniques are suitable for higher rotating speeds whilst acoustic emission techniques for low rotating speeds. Vibration techniques investigated in this research concern the use of the continuous wavelet transform (CWT), a joint time- and frequency domain method, This gives a more accurate representation of the vibration phenomenon than either time-domain analysis or frequency- domain analysis. The image processing technique, called binarising, is performed to produce binary image from the CWT transformed image in order to reduce computational time for classification. The back-propagation neural network (BPNN) is used for classification. The AE monitoring techniques investigated can be categorised, based on the features used, into: 1) the traditional AE parameters of energy, event duration and peak amplitude and 2) the statistical parameters estimated from the Weibull distribution of the inter-arrival times of AE events in what is called the STL method. Traditional AE parameters of peak amplitude, energy and event duration are extracted from individual AE events. These events are then ordered, selected and normalised before the selected events are displayed in a three-dimensional Cartesian feature space in terms of the three AE parameters as axes. The fuzzy C-mean clustering technique is used to establish the cluster centres as signatures for different machine conditions. A minimum distance classifier is then used to classify incoming AE events into the different machine conditions. The novel STL method is based on the detection of inter-arrival times of successive AE events. These inter-arrival times follow a Weibull distribution. The method provides two parameters: STL and L63 that are derived from the estimated Weibull parameters of the distribution's shape (y), characteristic life (0) and guaranteed life (to). It is found that STL and 43 are related hyperbolically. In addition, the STL value is found to be sensitive to bearing wear, the load applied to the bearing and the bearing rotating speed. Of the three influencing factors, bearing wear has the strongest influence on STL and L63. For the proposed bearing condition monitoring system to work, the effects of load and speed on STL need to be compensated. These issues are resolved satisfactorily in the project.

Agile methodologies have become a popular and widely accepted method for managing software development. Since the inception of the Agile Manifesto over ten years ago, agile development techniques have superseded waterfall methods in many, if not most, software development organizations. Despite its apparent success, many companies have struggled with the adoption and implementation of agile, and exactly what level of adoption provides optimum agility. Agility is commonly held in the literature to be constructed of elements external to a company or project but may in fact be composed of both external and internal elements. The exact relationship of the adoption of agile development techniques and their relationship to the actual agility of a business remain unclear. A primary contributor to this uncertainty is the somewhat amorphous definition of agile itself. In academic literature, the concept is still relatively young and loosely defined. In practice, organizations have largely opted for a hybrid approach to agile, mixing its concepts and methods with existing Stage Gate or waterfall methodologies. This has made the management of agile even more complex. Crucially, there is no definition or criterion available to determine the appropriate mix of agile and waterfall processes in an embedded software development context nor is there a method to determine the impact of one against the other. These issues beg the question: how do organizations manage agility? This interpretive case study provides an empirical account of how stakeholders manage both market and process agility in an embedded systems context via a hybrid agility implementation and product genesis. As a result, we provide the notion of agile vorticity, as the point at which market and process agility collide to produce business momentum at a specific point of innovation within the agile business vortex.

Ice crystals in clouds frequently form upon a subset of aerosol particles called ice nuclei (IN). IN influence cloud ice crystal concentrations, consequently affecting cloud lifetime and reflectivity. The present understanding of these effects on climate is hindered by limited data on the global distribution of IN. This thesis presents measurements of deposition-mode IN concentrations under conditions relevant to mid-level clouds, 238 K and 138% RHi. at two Canadian sites: Toronto, a major city, and Whistler, a pristine coniferous rainforest. In Toronto, chemically-resolved surface areas were estimated by single-particle mass spectrometry and regressed against IN concentrations to identify a significant relationship between IN concentrations and both carbonaceous aerosols (EC and/or OC) and dust. In Whistler, IN concentrations during a biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) event did not increase from background levels (0.1 /L), suggesting that biogenic SOA particles do not nucleate ice under these conditions.

Ice crystals in clouds frequently form upon a subset of aerosol particles called ice nuclei (IN). IN influence cloud ice crystal concentrations, consequently affecting cloud lifetime and reflectivity. The present understanding of these effects on climate is hindered by limited data on the global distribution of IN. This thesis presents measurements of deposition-mode IN concentrations under conditions relevant to mid-level clouds, 238 K and 138% RHi. at two Canadian sites: Toronto, a major city, and Whistler, a pristine coniferous rainforest. In Toronto, chemically-resolved surface areas were estimated by single-particle mass spectrometry and regressed against IN concentrations to identify a significant relationship between IN concentrations and both carbonaceous aerosols (EC and/or OC) and dust. In Whistler, IN concentrations during a biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) event did not increase from background levels (0.1 /L), suggesting that biogenic SOA particles do not nucleate ice under these conditions.

Cellular automata are systems of interconnected cells which are discrete in space, time and state. Cell states are updated synchronously according to a local rule which is dependent upon the current state of the given cell and those of its neighbours in a pre-defined neighbourhood. The local rule is common to all cells. Fuzzy cellular automata extend this notion to systems which are discrete in space and time but not state. In this thesis, we explore fuzzy cellular automata which are created from the extension of Boolean rules in disjunctive normal form to continuous functions. Motivated by recent results on the classification of these rules from empirical evidence, we set out first to show that fuzzy cellular automata can shed some light on classical cellular automata and then to prove that the observed results are mathematically correct. The main results of this thesis can be divided into two categories. We first investigate the links between fuzzy cellular automata and their Boolean counter-parts. We prove that number conservation is preserved by this transformation. We further show that Boolean additive cellular automata have a definable property in their fuzzy form which we call self-oscillation. We then give a probabilistic interpretation of fuzzy cellular automata and show that homogeneous asymptotic states are equivalent to mean field approximations of Boolean cellular automata. We then turn our attention the asymptotic behaviour of fuzzy cellular automata. In the second half of the thesis we investigate the observed behaviours of the fuzzy cellular automata derived from balanced Boolean rules. We show that the empirical results of asymptotic behaviour are correct. In fuzzy form, the balanced rules can be categorized as one of three types: weighted average rules, self-averaging rules, and local majority rules. Each type is analyzed in a variety of ways using a range of tools to explain their behaviours.

Communication is inextricably linked with the process of organisational change (Lewis, 1999). However, managers report that communication of organisational change is challenging, particularly with the advent of continuously changing organisations (Buchanan, Claydon & Doyle, 1999). Continuously changing organisations are those that seek to be more flexible, more innovative and more responsive to the dynamic external environment. One of the problems associated with continuous change is the resultant impact of successive downsizings, re-engineering efforts and culture changes on employee receptivity to change. Despite the unquestioning adoption of continuous change efforts (Zorn, Christensen, & Cheney, 1999) there is a paucity of research on communication during this type of change. This thesis addresses this knowledge gap by situating the research within a continuous change context. The primary research question is 'how do change communication models impact on employee receptivity to change within a continuous change context', and this question considers issues pertaining to how accurately previous change communication models reflect and explain what occurs within change processes. This topic is examined within two case-study organisations through the use of multiple methods. The analysis occurs through an interpretive framework and utilises Langley's (1999) alternate templates as a strategy to manage the process based research. A model of change communication during continuous change is presented, with the central constructs of the model being monologic change communication, dialogic change communication and the background talk of change. Further, Van de Ven and Poole's (1995) Process Theories of Change are extended to consider the sequencing of the three constructs. The findings suggest that the sequencing of the dominant change communication models is informed by an alignment of individual communication competences and change communication expectations.

Includes bibliographical reference. / viii, 149 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This study is concerned with filters that are robust to uncertainties in either the signal models or the noise statistics. Extensions to an interpolation approach to solving a continuous-time, linear, stationary filtering problem are presented. A robust extended Kalman filter is developed. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1996?