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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
231

Relational and Overt Aggression in Youth: Same Aggressive Tendency, Different Manifestations?

Marsee, Monica 07 August 2003 (has links)
The goal of this research was to determine whether relational aggression in girls was similar to overt aggression in boys in terms of social-psychological adjustment. A total of 199 fifth through ninth grade children (86 boys, 113 girls) participated in this study. Relational and overt aggression scores were used to form groups of children who varied on the two types of aggression. Results indicated that overtly aggressive boys did not differ from relationally aggressive girls in terms of depression, anxiety, psychopathy, sensation seeking, ADHD, delinquency, and drug use. Further, boys in the aggressive groups scored consistently higher than boys in the nonaggressive groups on all indices of maladjustment. The results of the current study provide support for the hypothesis that relational aggression in girls is not different from overt aggression in boys in terms of social-psychological adjustment problems.
232

Scholarship, Teaching, Service, and Supervision in Counselor Education: Faculty Members' Ratings of Importance

Orr, Jonathan 20 May 2005 (has links)
The goals of this exploratory study were to: (a) compare counselor educators’ ideal ratings of importance with their perceptions of the institutions’ importance ratings on tasks related to scholarship, teaching, service, and supervision and (b) expand the understanding of the importance that counselor education faculty members assign to those same tasks. Group differences based on characteristics of gender, ethnicity, tenure status, program type, type of institution, and type of college or university in ideal importance ratings for scholarship, teaching, service and supervision tasks were also examined in this study. Participants in this study were counselor education faculty members working in CACREP-accredited counseling graduate programs (N=169). All participants completed the Counselor Education Task Importance Instrument (CETII) that was designed for this study to assess participant's ideal and perceived institutional importance of tasks related to scholarship, teaching, service, and supervision. Paired ttests on all CETII items resulted in statistically significant differences between participants’ ideal importance ratings and their perceived institutional importance ratings in scholarship, teaching, service, and supervision tasks. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) resulted in statistically significant differences for participants’ ideal importance ratings for variables gender, type of program, type of institution, and type of college or university. Results for the MANOVA demonstrated nonsignificant statistical differences between ideal ratings for variations in the ethnicity and tenure status of participants. Faculty members in counselor education can use the findings from this study to establish priorities for their work in higher education and advocate for a professional counseling identity that is distinct from other disciplines in the social sciences. Administrators in higher education who have responsibility for establishing and maintaining tenure and promotion criteria for counselor education can utilize the same findings to create benchmarks that encourage equity for the advancement of counseling faculty members. Results from comparing ideal and perceived institutional importance ratings suggest that counselor educators have conflicting priorities for their professional counseling and their academic careers. Future research can compare actual institutional ratings to participants' ideal and perceived institutional ratings on the CETII in order to clarify counselor educators' multiple identities as practitioner, researcher, and educator.
233

On spectral relaxation and compact finite difference schemes for ordinary and partial differential equations

03 July 2015 (has links)
Ph.D. (Applied Mathematics) / In this thesis we introduce new numerical methods for solving nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations. These methods solve differential equations in a manner similar to the Gauss Seidel approach of solving linear systems of algebraic equations. First the nonlinear differential equations are linearized by simply evaluating nonlinear terms at previous iterations. To solve the linearized iteration schemes obtained we use either the spectral method or higher order compact finite difference schemes and we call the resulting methods the spectral relaxation method (SRM) and the compact finite difference relaxation method (CFD-RM) respectively. We test the applicability of these methods in a wide variety of ODEs and PDEs. The accuracy and computational efficiency in terms of CPU time is compared against other methods as well as other results from literature. We solve a range of chaotic and hyperchaotic systems of equations. Chaotic and hyperchaotic are complex dynamical systems which are characterised by rapidly changing solutions and high sensitivity to small perturbations of the initial data. As a result finding their solutions is a challenging task. We modify the proposed SRM to be able to deal with such systems of equations. We also consider chaos control and synchronization between too identical chaotic systems. We also make a comparison between the SRM and CFD-RM and between the spectral quasilinearization method (SQLM) and the compact finite difference quasilinearization method (CFD-QLM). The aim is to compare the performance between the spectral and the compact finite difference approaches in solving similarity boundary layer problems. We consider two examples. First, we consider the flow of a viscous incompressible electrically conducting fluid over a continuously shrinking sheet. We also consider a three-equation system that models the problem of unsteady free convective heat and mass transfer on a stretching surface in a porous medium in the presence of a chemical reaction. We extend the application of the SRMand SQLMto PDEs. In particular we consider two unsteady boundary layer flow problems modelled by a PDE or a system of PDEs. We solve a one dimensional unsteady boundary layer flow due to an impulsively stretching surface and the problem of unsteady three-dimensional MHD flow and mass transfer in a porous space. Results are compared with results obtained using the Keller-box method which is popular in solving unsteady boundary layer problems. We also extend the application of the CFD-RM to PDEs modelling unsteady boundary layer flows and again compare results to Keller-box results. We consider two examples, the unsteady one dimensional MHD laminar boundary layer flow due to an impulsively stretching surface, and the unsteady three-dimensional MHD flow and heat transfer over an impulsively stretching plate.
234

Gender differences in the response to short term beta-adrenergic induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis and necrosis in rats

Mielke, Carmella 26 January 2011 (has links)
MSc (Med), University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences / Background: Males have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular diseases compared to premenopausal women. However, postmenopausal women are at equal risk to men. It has therefore been suggested that estrogen is cardioprotective. Although the exact mechanisms of the purported cardioprotective effects of estrogen are unknown, estrogen administration has been reported to suppress beta-adrenergic receptor up-regulation in ovariectomized female rats. As beta-adrenergic activation induces cardiomyocyte apoptosis and necrosis, and hence adverse cardiac remodelling and heart failure, I aimed to determine whether the extent of beta-adrenergic induced apoptosis and necrosis differs between males and females. Methods: 27 male Wistar rats were assigned to one of two groups: ISO M (n=14) receiving a beta-adrenergic receptor agonist, isoproterenol (0.02mg/kg) and CON M (n=13) receiving vehicle (saline, 0.2ml). 29 female Wistar rats were assigned to one of two groups: ISO F (n=15) receiving a beta-adrenergic receptor agonist, isoproterenol (0.02mg/kg) and CON F (n=14) receiving vehicle. Isoproterenol and saline were administered by means of daily subcutaneous injections for 5 days. On the 5th day, cardiac geometry and function were assessed before and after ISO or saline administration using echocardiography. Rats were then terminated under anaesthesia within 30 minutes of ISO (or vehicle) administration and blood samples collected for the determination of serum estrogen concentration (ELISA). Female rats were terminated in proestrus which corresponds to peak estrogen concentrations. Cardiac myocyte apoptosis was assessed histologically using the DeadEndTM Colorimetric TUNEL system (Promega, Madison, WI, USA). The number of apoptotic cardiomyocyte nuclei was expressed as a percentage of the total number of cardiomyocyte nuclei per slide (heamotoxylin and eosin stain). Necrosis and fibrosis (pathological score) were assessed by assigning a pathological score to sections stained for fibrosis (van Gieson). Groups were iii compared using two-way (gender and regimen; and including repeated measures for echocardiography data) ANOVA followed by the Tukey-Kramer post hoc test. Results: As expected estrogen concentrations were higher in female compared to male rats (mean±SEM, pg.ml-1; ISO M: 7.04±1.41; CON M: 7.14±0.53; ISO F: 23.00±3.47; CON F: 19.31±3.66; p<0.01). Five days of ISO or saline administration had no effect on cardiac function or geometry in either the male or the female rats. Inotropic effects (increased heart rate and cardiac function) were observed in response to acute ISO administration in both male and female rats. The female rats had slower heart rates (p<0.05) and showed a greater heart rate response to acute ISO administration than the male rats (p<0.05). But the acute ISO induced increments in cardiac function were similar between genders. Five days of ISO administration induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis in male rats but not in female rats (mean±SEM, % ; ISO M: 0.086±0.013; CON M: 0.030±0.004; ISO F: 0.053±0.004; CON F: 0.041±0.007; p<0.05). Furthermore, 5 days of ISO administration induced cardiomyocyte necrosis in male rats but not in female rats (mean±SEM, pathological score; ISO M: 1.21±0.21, CON M: 0.46±0.14, ISO F: 0.50±0.11, CON F: 0.68±0.12, p<0.01). Conclusion: Male rats are more susceptible than female rats to beta-adrenergic induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis and necrosis. The protective effects of estrogen against the adverse effects of beta-adrenergic activation on the heart, may explain the lower risk of cardiovascular disease in premenopausal women compare to men; however, the possible role of progesterone cannot be ignored.
235

'Self-awareness, living ethicality, and the primordial unjustifiability of torture'

Janse van Vuuren, Danica January 2017 (has links)
A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Philosophy), 2017 / This study seeks to investigate whether torture is fundamentally wrong and, if so, whether its status is a question of morality or of that which is prior to morality. According to the thought of Jacques Derrida, the play of différance makes it syntactically impossible for any term to signify meaning outside of the interplay of mutually opposing signifiers. Since Deontological and Utilitarian moral principles unfold within this differential play, they are syntactically incapable of signifying a concrete and constant moral status for torture. Even though différance is the syntactic possibility of being, I argue that there is a second and distinct category of experience. Drawing on the writing of Emmanuel Levinas and Bernard Lonergan, I contend that this category is our subjectivity as self-awareness, which always-already unfolds anterior to, as the primordial possibility of, and as otherwise than both différance and being. As an irreducibility constitutive of each person, the alterity of such self-awareness constitutes an absolute and singular relation of otherness between persons; this proximity functions as an absolute obligation and, in fact, constitutes ethics itself. Each subject therefore becomes an individual living ethicality. On this basis, it is always-already incoherent to identify any subject with any idea that we might have of him/her, including the idea of a person as a means to our ends. Since torture intentionally violates the living ethicality of the victim, it follows that torture must be ethically unjustifiable by primordial necessity under any and all possible circumstances. The ethical unjustifiability of torture therefore precedes all moral structures, although I suggest that torture may become permissible under certain practical circumstances, if saving human lives is at stake. Keywords: Torture; self-awareness; alterity; living ethicality; otherwise than being; différance; Emmanuel Levinas; Jacques Derrida; Bernard Lonergan. / GR2018
236

The reliability and validity of the Tswana translations of three pain rating scales amongst patients with back pain

Yazbek, Michelle Ann 14 July 2008 (has links)
ABSTRACT Pain is a subjective sensation and is difficult to measure. It is important to quantify pain as benefits are obtained from its quantification. The validity and reliability of pain outcome measures have been extensively researched in Europe, America and Asia. In Africa on the other hand, very few studies have been done. This study was a cross-sectional study to validate and test the reliability of pain scales.The aim of this study was to establish the validity and reliability of the Tswana translations of three pain scales, namely, the Visual Analogue scale (two versions), the Verbal Rating Scale and the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Measure. The validity of the study was determined by the face validity,criterion validity and construct validity.The statistical analysis of the results showed several significant p values (p< 0.05).However, none of the correlations illustrated a strong relationship as there were no r values in excess of 0.5 indicating a moderate correlation or greater than 0.7 indicating a good correlation. The statistical significance only indicated that the observed values were not due to chance.From the statistical analysis of the results, it became apparent that the subjects tested did not have an understanding of any of the three scales .This was seen in all the age groups and education levels selected for the purpose of this study. It is our recommendation therefore, that suitable, new scales be developed for our local population. The scales which have been used up until now are not being understood and hence are not being interpreted or used correctly in the South African context amongst Tswana speaking individuals. Future research needs to be done in developing entirely different scales for the South African scenario. More relevant and better understood scales should be developed for our local population to include persons of different languages and different education levels. This will assist in a better understanding of the health care process and will by so doing, improve their health care and management.
237

Raven's advanced progressive matrices within a South African context

Israel, Nicole 14 November 2006 (has links)
faculty of Humanities School of Human and Community Development 9807986h IsrealN@umthombo.wits.ac.za / The issue of bias, whether a psychological test measures what it claims to measure similarly across different groups, remains a fundamental concern within the field of psychometrics, particularly within South Africa, where a history riddled with oppression, discrimination and malpractice in the area has led to suspicion, mistrust and legislation banning the use of many psychological tests as invalid and unfair (Foxcroft & Roodt, 2001; Murphy & Davidshofer, 2001; Nell, 1999). There is thus clearly a need for additional and more detailed investigations of the way specific individual tests function in the South African context. This study attempted to creatively examine systematic differences in performance on one specific test, the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), on the basis of home language and gender, factors seldom investigated in the literature. A sample of one hundred Psychology first-year students completed a demographic questionnaire, the RAPM, the Similarities sub-test of the South African Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (SAWAIS) and an adapted version of the Reading Comprehension subtest of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT). The data gathered was then utilized to explore four main research questions. Firstly, in order to establish construct comparability, the relationship between the RAPM and a more verbally-oriented measure of g, the Similarities sub-test of the SAWAIS, was assessed. Results indicated a relatively strong positive relationship between the two measures (r = 0.66), and no significant differences between the correlations on the basis of either gender or home language. Secondly, in order to explore the relationship between the RAPM and English comprehension, the study assessed the relationship between overall, literal and inferential scores on an adapted version of the Reading Comprehension sub-test of the SDRT and the RAPM. Results indicated only a moderate relationship between the two tests (r = 0.65), no difference in the relationship between RAPM performance and literal comprehension or inferential comprehension, and no difference in the relationship between the two tests on the basis of either gender or home language. Thirdly, in order to establish whether items were found to be difficult in a similar way across the different gender and home language groups, p-values and regression lines were calculated. These indicated that significant differences in level of item difficulty were experienced between English and African language speakers, although no differences were apparent in item difficulty on the basis of gender. 5 Lastly, in order to establish whether qualitative differences in performance on the basis of ability (as estimated by performance on the RAPM), gender or language existed, a discrimination analysis examining the types of errors made by each group was performed. Repeated measures ANOVAs and multiple comparison post-hoc analyses revealed significant differences in the types of errors made on the basis of ability and home language, but not gender. The post-hoc analyses suggested that those of higher ability or first language English speakers were more likely to make incomplete correlate errors, while those of lower ability or speaking African first languages were more likely to make confluence of ideas errors. In general, the findings of the study seemed to suggest that the RAPM, while not biased on the basis of gender, might contain a deep-seated language bias despite their non-verbal presentation.
238

Lightning return stroke electromagnetics - time domain evaluation and application

McAfee, Carson William Ian January 2016 (has links)
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering, 2016 / The work presented extends and contributes to the research of modelling lightning return stroke (RS) electromagnetic (EM) fields in the time domain. Although previous work in this area has focused on individual lightning electromagnetic pulse (LEMP) modelling techniques, there has not been an investigation into the strengths and weaknesses of different methods, as well as the implementation considerations of the models. This work critically compares three unique techniques (Finite Antenna, FDTD, and Single Cell FDTD) under the same ideal simulation parameters. The research presented will evaluate the EM fields in the range of 50m to 500m from the lightning channel. This range, often referred to as the near field distance, has a significant effect on lightning induced overvoltages on distribution lines, which are primarily created by the horizontal EM fields of the RS channel. These close distances have a significant effect on the model implementations, especially with the FDTD method. Each of these modelling methods is explained and tested through examples. The models are implemented in C++ and have been included in the Appendix to aid in future implementation. From the model simulations it is clear that the FDTD method is the most comprehensive model available. It allows for non-ideal ground planes, as well as complex simulation environments. However, FDTD has a number of numerical related errors that the Finite Antenna method does not suffer from. The Single Cell FDTD method is simple to implement and does not suffer from the same numerical errors as a full FDTD implementation, but is limited to simple simulation environments. This work contributes to the research field by comparing and evaluating three techniques and giving consideration to the implementation and the applicability to lightning EM simulations. / MT2017
239

The ethnodemographic differences in marital behavior: changes and attitudes

Kalzhanova, Ulziya January 2011 (has links)
The ethnodemographic differences in marital behavior: changes and attitudes Abstract This work deals with the ethnic differentiation of marital behavior in Kazakhstan. The study of marital behavior of ethnic groups is important and necessary, especially in a multiethnic state as Kazakhstan. Undoubtedly, the institution of marriage regulates the social reproduction of the population, and differences in marital behavior have an impact on family organizations and fertility among ethnic groups. These differences may shape the age at first marriage, age at first birth, and so on, that will have subsequent effects on the family organization among these ethnic groups. This work attempts to analyze the differences in attitudes toward marital marital myths between ethnic Kazakhs and Slavics. The sociological research has revealed some significant differences in the myths existing about marriage between these ethnic groups. These differences, largely due to socio-cultural characteristics. Keywords: marriage, marital behavior, ethnic groups, differences, Kazakhstan
240

Love Thy Neighbour : En kvantitativ studie om hyresfastigheters påverkan på de närliggande bostadsrättspriserna

Jensen, Joel, Markebeck, Simon January 2019 (has links)
Hyresrätt är en populär boendeform i Sverige. Trots det är diskrepansen mellan utbud och efterfrågan stor. Ett utökat investeringsstöd till utvecklingen av nya hyresfastigheter pekar på att insatser görs för att möta det bristande utbudet, men få svenska studier har undersökt om nybyggnation av hyresfastigheter har någon påverkan på området de utvecklas i. Denna uppsats undersöker om en tillkomst av hyresfastigheter på Kungsholmen i Stockholms innerstad påverkat närliggande bostadsrättspriser genom de attribut som hyresrätter för med sig, vilket i första hand antas vara låginkomsttagare. Via en difference-in-differences-regression, där data över genomsnittliga kvadratmeterpriser, medelinkomst och andel utrikes födda används, framkommer ett statistiskt signifikant resultat som säger att prisutvecklingen bland bostadsrätterna i SAMS-området Östra Stadshagen hade varit 8,2% högre om inte tre nya hyresfastigheter hade tillkommit i området år 2011. Resultaten bör dock tolkas med viss försiktighet, och författarna uppmanar till fler studier på området för att med säkerhet kunna fastslå om en tillkomst av hyresfastigheter har några priseffekter på närliggande bostadsområden.

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