Esta dissertação busca identificar os elementos integrados pelos caminhoneiros autônomos em suas vidas móveis. Analisa como estes motoristas extraem permanência de suas mobilidades, constitutivas desses modos de vidas. Os caminhoneiros são profissionais especializados em operar veículos automotores de carga e fazer circular mercadorias a partir do transporte rodoviário. Trata-se de um conjunto disperso e heterogêneo que executa grandes jornadas de trabalho distantes de seus endereços fixos, para onde retornam intermitentemente. Sem desvincular-se dos cotidianos mais sedentários, intensificam o convívio com os caminhões e as estradas. Instrumento de trabalho, mas também casa móvel, o caminhão é onde se realiza obrigações, prazeres e lazeres. Os veículos adquirem diverso usos, modificações, valores, afetos e podem operar nas distinções entre pares. Cuidados de si e dos caminhões se misturam e revestem a boleia de domesticidade masculina que ajuda a viabilizar o ser caminhoneiro. Nas estradas, cumpre-se o itinerário, cujas rotas e prazos são estipulados pelo mercado. O itinerário é preenchido pelos caminhoneiros por intensas negociações entre tarefas laborais e extralaborais manifestadas nas escolhas e efetivações das paradas que pontuam o trajeto. Nos estabelecimentos comerciais, os motoristas se vinculam ao pessoal do posto, chapas e putas. São interações afetivas, trabalhistas, sexuais e de consumo que se articulam e animam as estradas. Tendo em vista a vida social das BRs esta etnografia se desenvolveu a partir de caronas nas boleias de caminhão, um tipo de mobilidade informal e gratuita inteligível neste contexto, em especial, para os caminhoneiros. As teorias elaboradas pelos motoristas inspiraram esta dissertação e suscitam dialogo com algumas discussões acadêmicas sobre mobilidades e trabalho caminhoneiro no campo das humanidades. Com isso, leva-se em conta que quando os motoristas e caminhões se movem pelas estradas, não só as mercadorias são postas em circulação através de itinerários. Junto a elas se movimentam também certa economia corporal, material e simbólica numa trama adensada de relações que cria e recria caminhos. Estes, indispensáveis para a permanência dessas vidas móveis. / This dissertation aims to identify what are the elements that truck drivers integrate in their mobile lives. We analyze how these truck drivers extract permanence of their mobilities, constitutive of those ways of living. The truck drivers professionals specializes in operate cargo automotive vehicles, transporting goods across the road network. They are a heterogeneous disperse set of professionals performing long work periods away from their fixed homes, to which they return intermittently. Thus, they keep bonds with their settled dwellings while they intensify their sociality with trucks and roads. The truck is both a work tool and a mobile house, where they perform duties, pleasures and leisure. The vehicles are put to different uses, customizations, values, affections and may engender distinction amongst colleagues. Drivers intertwine self-care and truck maintenance, investing the truck lorry of a masculine domesticity which instantiate what is to be a truck driver. On the road, an itinerary is fulfilled, with market stipulated routes and schedules. Meanwhile, truck drivers entangle their itinerary with intense negotiations between work tasks and other activities, which take place in the truck drivers choices of where they stop along the way. At side road shops and stores, drivers relate to gas station workers, local guides and prostitutes. Labor, affective, sexual and consumption relations that makes the road alive. Regarding the social life of Brazilian federal highways and roads, this ethnographic research was carried out by means of hitchhiking truck lorries, a free and non-official way of faring used to translate to the drivers the anthropological research. The theories conceived by those truckers have inspired this work and are presented in dialogue with academic debates on mobilities and truck drivers professional realities. Thus, we consider that not only goods are set in motion when drivers and trucks fare their itineraries, but there is also a specific bodily, material and symbolic economy moving along a thick meshwork of relations that make and unmake paths. Those are constitutive of the permanence of those mobile lives.

Thesis (M. Com. (Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2018 / Many developing countries are trying to make their business environment more attractive to foreign investors. They try this by relaxing rules regarding market entry and foreign ownership; improving infrastructure and making other efforts to enhance their chances of becoming a destination country for foreign direct investment (FDI). Among the characteristics of globalisation is the unrestricted capital flow and access to world market. Global FDI stocks have been on the increase and many more African countries are becoming more open to FDI, even though it still remains low. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to provide an analysis of the driving factors towards foreign direct investment in South Africa. The ARDL approach is used to investigate drivers of international investment decisions in South Africa using quarterly data from 2007Q1 to 2017Q1. The bounds cointegration method was chosen to analyse the long and the short run relationship amongst the variables of interest. In addition, the Granger Causality test was used to determine causal relationships between FDI and other variables. The study found that household income level had an effect in the stock of FDI. It also found that labour productivity increased the total output of goods and services and therefore impacted on the stock of FDI in the country. Public infrastructure investment and interest rates are also among the important factors that determine FDI inflow. Furthermore, the dummy variable has a significant negative effect and it shows that labour strikes and unrests affect FDI negatively. Although South Africa has implemented strategies to attract more FDI, recent political instability and labour disputes has left investor weary of the future of the economy therefore a refinement of some of these policies is needed if the country is to be successful in this regard. The county should also focus on developing and maintaining quality infrastructures in terms of, roads, telephones, internet access, water and electricity supply.

Understanding what promotes invasiveness of species outside their native range and predicting which ecosystems and under which conditions will be invaded is an ultimate goal of the field of invasion ecology. Obtaining general answers to these questions requires synthesis of extensive yet heterogeneous empirical evidence, coupled with a solid theoretical background. In this dissertation, I sought to provide insight into the drivers of non-native plant invasions through combining and synthesizing ecological data from various sources using advanced statistical techniques. The results of this work are presented as three independent research studies. In the first study, I aimed to understand what determines competitive advantage of non-native over native plants: the ability to suppress other plants, tolerate them, or both. For this, I collected data from 192 studies on plant competition and analyzed them within a Bayesian multilevel meta-analytic framework. I showed that non-native plants outperform their native counterparts due to the high tolerance of competition, as opposed to strong suppressive ability. Competitive tolerance ability of non-native plants was driven by neighbor’s origin and was expressed in response to native species and not to other non-native species. This synthesis demonstrates that non-native plants are competitively distinct from native plants and challenges the common notion that neighbor suppression is the primary strategy for plant invasion success. In the second study, I quantified the extent to which regional, landscape and local environmental factors individually and jointly affect understory non-native invasive plants across northern US forests. I used boosted regression trees and Bayesian nonlinear regressions to analyze forest inventory data spanning 14 northern US states in combination with data on climate, land use, and disturbance. Regionally, the highest level of plant invasion was observed in hotter regions with lower annual precipitation and climate seasonality and higher summer precipitation. Locally, young forests with moist to wet soils and relatively flat topography in open, human-altered landscapes at low elevation were most susceptible to invasion. Climate and land use strongly interacted in their effect on plant invasions. This study refines the understanding of the non-native plant invasion process in northern US forests and the obtained models can be used to generate predictions under current and future environmental regimes to inform management. In the third study, I tested the relationship between the long-term history of recurrent canopy disturbance by a non-native invasive defoliator, the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar), and the level of non-native plant invasion in northeastern US forests. I reconstructed 46 years (1970–2015) of gypsy-moth defoliation history and quantified the cumulative effect of defoliation on understory non-native invasive plant species using multivariate techniques and Bayesian nonlinear regressions. Contrary to what is commonly expected, the cumulative severity of gypsy moth defoliation tended to be negatively associated with the presence and richness of invasive plant species, although this association was weak. This study suggests that the effect of biotic disturbance on forest plant invasions may vary in both the magnitude and direction depending on characteristics of disturbance regime and its effect on resident biota, and this needs to be explicitly taken into account when predicting future plant invasions.

Ligne continue, homogène et inhabitée, la représentation de l’autoroute se conçoit presque exclusivement comme un équipement fonctionnel du transport, traversant des territoires. Cependant, l’autoroute serait également traversée par ces mêmes territoires, donnant suite à l’émergence d’acteurs et d’une diversité de pratiques. Des problématiques locales, en apparence parfois anodines, finiraient par s’imposer et modifier la conception, la gestion et l’exploitation des infrastructures. Cette thèse s’interroge sur l’existence et la nature d’une dimension territoriale de l’autoroute, mais aussi infrastructurelle du territoire. Ce questionnement est supporté par deux ethnographies : l’une dans la société concessionnaire Vinci autoroutes, avec la Direction du patrimoine et de la construction de Cofiroute ; la seconde avec des acteurs, dont des habitants, des usagers et des élus locaux, situés autour d’autoroutes concédées par ce même gestionnaire privé, dans la région Centre-Val de Loire. Les ethnographies sont accompagnées d’un travail cartographique pour entrevoir les différentes articulations entre infrastructures et territoires. Finalement, la thèse montre la nécessité d’appréhender l’autoroute en tant que région autoroutière, comme un espace traversé par des questions territoriales faites de détails significatifs, au-delà de l’infrastructure elle-même, et d’une multitude d’objets, d’acteurs et de pratiques. Le réseau autoroutier est décomposé pour donner à voir un ensemble d’éléments, d’organisations et de codifications, en lien à des territoires. Ce changement de représentation met en perspective le positionnement des infrastructures autoroutières dans les collectivités locales, avec des formes d’appropriations, de coopérations, d’échanges ou de divergences. / A continuous line, homogeneous and uninhabited, the representation of the highway is often and almost exclusively conceived as a functional equipment of transport and engineering, crossing territories. However, the motorway would also be crossed by these same territories, following the emergence of actors and a variety of practices. Local issues, seemingly sometimes insignificants, would eventually impose and change the design, management and operation of infrastructure. This thesis questions the existence and the nature of a territorial dimension of the highway but also an infrastructural dimension of the territory. This questioning is supported and explored by two ethnographies: one within the private operator of highways, Vinci Autoroutes, with the Directorate of Heritage and Construction of Cofiroute; the second with actors, including inhabitants, users and local elected officials, located around motorways conceded by the same private concessionaire, in the Center-Val de Loire region. The ethnographies are accompanied by a cartographic work which allows to glimpse the different articulations between infrastructures and territories. Finally, the thesis shows the necessity to apprehend the highway as a highway region, that is to say, as a space crossed by territorial questions made of significant details, beyond the infrastructure itself; and a multitude of objects, actors and practices. To do this, the highway network is broken down to reveal a set of elements, organizations and codifications, related to territories. This change in representation puts into perspective the positioning of highway infrastructure in local communities, with forms of appropriation, cooperation, exchange or divergence.

Background: Understanding how coherently commitment and basic human values shaping and affecting timebank, one of the popular peer-to-peer exchange system. With time banking, a person with own skill set can trade hours of work for equal hours for another member using hours for paying or being paid for services. Thesis aim: Understanding the impact of drivers/barriers and personal values and how these are connected to the commitment Methodology A quantitative study with forty-seven timebanks across three different country – USA, New Zealand and India. Survey were conducted to collect data and later SPSS has been used for analyzation Findings: Values play significant role to shape commitment to timebank and commitment and personal values has relationship with drivers and barriers of participation in timebank.

<p>Most traffic accidents are caused by human factors. The design of the driver environment has proven essential to facilitate safe driving. With the advent of new devices such as mobile telephones, GPS-navigation and similar systems the workload on the driver has been even more complicated. There is an obvious need for tools supporting objective evaluation of such systems, in order to design more effective and simpler driver environments. </p><p>At the moment video is the most used technique for capturing the drivers visual behaviour. But the analysis of these recordings is very time consuming and only give an estimate of where the visual attention is. An automated tool for analysing visual behaviour would minimize the post processing drastically and leave more time for understanding the data. </p><p>In this thesis the development of a tool for visualising where the driver’s attention is while driving the vehicle. This includes methods for playing back data stored on a hard drive, but also methods for joining data from multiple different sources.</p>

Long-haul truck drivers are absent from their families for prolonged periods of time. This paper examines the methods trucking families use to remain connected given such absences. Interviews with ten women married to long-haul truck drivers underwent qualitative analysis. Initially, personal profiles were developed to illustrate life experiences of the women. While the trucking industry set the context, the families decided how to cope with the lifestyle. Patterns of coping strategies developed by the families were described by the women. Coping strategies did not result from the efforts of one individual. All family members contributed to it in a dynamic process. One instrumental source of support was the driver's trucking company. Support systems instrumental in helping families utilize coping mechanisms were identified. Women used ambivalent thought to resolve negative emotions. In addition, an environmental analysis that compared the homes of the women and the homes of non-truckers was conducted to determine whether trucking women's homes reflected their lifestyle and attitudes toward their husband's absence. The trucking family engages in an atypical lifestyle, yet their issues are similar to those experienced by families whose husbands and fathers are home every night. Trucking families continually seek to find methods that allow them to think of themselves as normative. / Graduation date: 1999

The primary goal of a publicly traded company is to maximise the wealth of its shareholders. This implies that the management of the firm, as agents of the owners, has to manage the firm in such a manner as to create value from every decision taken. Value-based management (VBM) is a management strategy aimed at achieving shareholder wealth creation and is based on the effective management of a set of internal value drivers to maximise wealth creation. The primary objective of the current study is to investigate the quantification of the relationship between internal value drivers and shareholder wealth creation in the Mining sector of JSE listed companies in South Africa. In order to achieve this, the internal value drivers were identified from literature, the necessary financial data was collected and the value drivers as well as actual shareholder wealth were quantified. Revenue growth, operating profitability, capital requirements and weighted average cost of capital (WACC) were identified as the value drivers while total shareholder return (TSR) was identified as the actual shareholder wealth creator. For the purpose of the current study, WACC was excluded from the analysis. By application of linear regression, it was found that revenue growth and operating profitability have a positive, statistically significant effect of TSR. After analysing the effect size, it is however concluded that the effect is not practically significant. These findings concur with similar research in the field of VBM. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Based on a meta-study, the paper describes the existing options, areal extents, and Swedish farmers' conditions for energy crop production promoted by the governments to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The drivers of and barriers to cultivating various energy crops are described in terms of a variety of motivational factors. The approach used peer-reviewed and gray literature using three Internet sources. Questions addressed include the energy crops available to Swedish farmers and how well established they are in terms of areal extent. What drivers of and barriers to growing energy crops do farmers perceive? How do various motivational factors for these drivers and barriers correspond to the adoption of certain energy crops? The results indicate that 13 energy-related crops are available, of which straw (a residue), oil crops, and wheat are the most extensively produced in terms of cultivated area. Results confirm earlier research findings that converting from annual to perennial crops and from traditional crops or production systems to new ones are important barriers. Economic motivations for changing production systems are strong, but factors such as values (e.g., esthetic), knowledge (e.g., habits and knowledge of production methods), and legal conditions (e.g., cultivation licenses) are crucial for the change to energy crops. Finally, there are knowledge gaps in the literature as to why farmers decide to keep or change a production system. Since the Swedish government and the EU intend to encourage farmers to expand their energy crop production, this knowledge of such motivational factors should be enhanced. / Ett konkurrenskraftigt jordbruk – kommunikation kring klimatförändring och nya möjligheter (K3), Stiftelsen Lantbruksforskning

Är volontärt psykoterapeutarbete en win-win situation eller en fattigdomsfälla? Finns detblinda fläckar i den goda intentionen eller är en volontärresurs enbart av godo? Syftet med undersökningen var att beskriva hur några psykoterapeuter ser på sin arbetsinsats och arbets-situation som volontärer och samtidigt väcka frågor kring det ideella arbetets drivkrafter, eventuell påverkan på psykoterapirelationen och arbetstillfredsställelsens betydelse.  Verksamheten som studerades finns inom Stadsmissionens regi i Stockholm på Terapicentretför unga, där merparten av psykoterapeuterna är volontärer. Den undersökningsmetod som användes var semi-strukturerad intervju och fem volontärer deltog i undersökningen. Den teoretiska anknytningen har huvudsakligen utgjorts av litteratur inom den psykodynamiska teoribildningen och då särskilt forskning inom psykoterapins område avseende terapeutisk effektivitet. Även forskning inriktad på relationell psykoterapi och forskning inom ideellt och volontärt arbete har bidragit till den teoretiska referensramen. Resultaten visade att volontärerna upplever drivkrafter som egennytta,  att få vara del i ett meningsfullt sammanhang och att få göra nytta för andra som centrala drivkrafter för sin volontärinsats som också beskrivs som mycket engagerande, meningsfull, stimulerande, givande och som starkt hoppingivande. Viktigt var också upplevelsen av positivt bekräftande från omgivningen. Arbetssituationen upplevdes som mycket tillfredsställande och parametrar som gott ledarskap, frihet, flexbilitet och den sociala kontexten lyftes fram. I undersökningen kunde inte konstateras någon uppenbar koppling mellan det volontära engagemanget och innehållet i psykoterapi-relationen. Undersökningsresultaten kan tolkas som att volontärarbetet sammantaget upplevs som identitetsstärkande för volontären.