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Currently, South African editors do not have a prescribed set of professional editing standards. The absence of standards is cause for concern because it reflects the largely unregulated status of the South African editing industry. An important problem arising from the lack of standards is that there is no way in which the industry can determine the competence of its practitioners. In addition, the absence of standards also affects other areas of the industry, such as training, accreditation, regulation and professionalisation. As a consequence, editors struggle to obtain professional recognition for their work. Against this background, this study postulates that the development of standards for South African editors is possible and necessary. However, because the South African editing industry is highly diversified in terms of the various contexts in which editors may work, the development of standards needs to be based on the identification of shared or core tasks and skills that are essential for the everyday work of all editors, together with the identification of tasks and skills specific to certain sectors. This may lead to the development of a set of core standards for editors, supplemented by sector-specific standards. The focal point of this study is the first of these two aspects: the development of core standards for editors in South Africa. In order to develop core standards for South African editors, this study comprises a literature review and empirical investigation. The literature review analyses the status of the South African editing industry, and also contributes to the identification of a comprehensive list of tasks and skills involved in editing. The empirical investigation is based on a survey questionnaire (utilising the tasks and skills identified in the literature review) designed to collect data on which tasks and skills form an essential part of South African editors' work. The questionnaire was sent to a stratified sample of South African editors, reflecting the four sectors identified for the purposes of this study: editing for book publishing, editing for mass media, technical editing and academic editing. The data collected from the questionnaire was analysed utilising various statistical methods, in order to extrapolate core (or shared) tasks and skills among South African editors. These core tasks and skills were used to draft a document outlining core standards for South African editors, which was tested for accessibility and clarity by means of a semi-Delphi study. / M.A., Language Practice, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010

Currently, South African editors do not have a prescribed set of professional editing standards. The absence of standards is cause for concern because it reflects the largely unregulated status of the South African editing industry. An important problem arising from the lack of standards is that there is no way in which the industry can determine the competence of its practitioners. In addition, the absence of standards also affects other areas of the industry, such as training, accreditation, regulation and professionalisation. As a consequence, editors struggle to obtain professional recognition for their work. Against this background, this study postulates that the development of standards for South African editors is possible and necessary. However, because the South African editing industry is highly diversified in terms of the various contexts in which editors may work, the development of standards needs to be based on the identification of shared or core tasks and skills that are essential for the everyday work of all editors, together with the identification of tasks and skills specific to certain sectors. This may lead to the development of a set of core standards for editors, supplemented by sector-specific standards. The focal point of this study is the first of these two aspects: the development of core standards for editors in South Africa. In order to develop core standards for South African editors, this study comprises a literature review and empirical investigation. The literature review analyses the status of the South African editing industry, and also contributes to the identification of a comprehensive list of tasks and skills involved in editing. The empirical investigation is based on a survey questionnaire (utilising the tasks and skills identified in the literature review) designed to collect data on which tasks and skills form an essential part of South African editors' work. The questionnaire was sent to a stratified sample of South African editors, reflecting the four sectors identified for the purposes of this study: editing for book publishing, editing for mass media, technical editing and academic editing. The data collected from the questionnaire was analysed utilising various statistical methods, in order to extrapolate core (or shared) tasks and skills among South African editors. These core tasks and skills were used to draft a document outlining core standards for South African editors, which was tested for accessibility and clarity by means of a semi-Delphi study. / M.A., Language Practice, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010

Within society Information Technology (IT) is becoming pervasive. This is no more pronounced than in Higher Education where IT is almost ubiquitously used. Current developments have also seen Web 2.0 tools such as wikis being used in pedagogical contexts. Research in computer anxiety has identified that quality of initial experience may be important in the onset of anxiety towards IT. However the concept of computer anxiety is too vague to reflect likely reactions to specific IT scenarios especially in interactions with social technology such as wikis. Although wikis are growing in popularity little is known about users‟ emotional reaction towards contributing to them, how their experiences shape these emotions as well as the users‟ view of usability above that mentioned in qualitative research. Due to the interface, social and flexible nature of wikis users may be anxious towards editing. This research aims to offer causal insight into the influence of wiki site design characteristics on anxiety towards wiki editing and users usability evaluation of wiki editing experiences. Three experiment-based studies are presented addressing the effects of site characteristics such as in-built training spaces (i.e. tutorials and sandboxes commonly used on wikis), user editing identity as well as aspects inherent to wiki sites such as content flexibility, on anxiety felt by users in editing scenarios and users usability rating of their editing experiences. The research also aimed to identify whether initial experiences affected anxiety about further editing, as suggested by computer anxiety research, or whether emotions are only affected during editing experience. The findings of the initial study on in-built training spaces suggest that the concept of wiki anxiety measured in this research more accurately reflects anxiety experienced during interaction than computer anxiety. Additionally the in-built training spaces using tutorials were seen to lead to better first experiences for novice users in using the wiki markup interface than those without (such as when experiencing sandbox training spaces and no training). Similarly the presence of a tutorial reduced wiki anxiety during interaction but did not affect anxiety towards future editing. From these findings the work advanced to study the effect of identity salience on wiki anxiety during editing and wiki usability focusing on contributing content using a user group with experience editing wikis. This was so as to explore the effect of wiki characteristics on user experience variables above that from first exposure anxiety likely in novice users. The research found that participants were less anxious when editing the wiki anonymously than when editing using a pseudonym and full name identity. There was however no effect of identity salience on usability rating. Additionally the type of edit conducted by participants, in terms of addition or deletion and replacement of content, did not have a significant effect on either anxiety during editing or usability evaluation. Further research exploring the effect of flexibility and other user behaviour on user anxiety and usability evaluation when contributing subsequently found that there was no significant effect of flexibility on the wiki user experience variables. The work demonstrates successful empirical evaluation of the wiki user editing experience can be achieved and can lead to important causal insight into the effects of wiki site design on the users‟ experience. It also identifies aspects of the site that can lead to the reduction of anxiety towards editing during interaction and influence usability rating towards the system.

The aim of this thesis is to locate current problems concerning the process of finding common ground between a creative producer and its respective client, furthermore it aims to propose a solution to this problem in the context of collaborative video editing. The paper starts off by exploring research related to the topic. After that, it establishes, through interviews with experts within fields of video editing and graphic design, what the currently existing problems are concerning communication within their line of work. As a solution to these problems, a collaborative software is proposed with the idea of bridging the understanding between the video editor and its client. The paper ends with some conclusions surrounding the current state of the topic and proposes a way forward for both practitioners and researchers.

Composition studies lacks a comprehensive theory of error, one which successfully defines error in writing and offers a pedagogical response to ostensible errors that neither ignores nor pathologizes them. Electronic text-critiquing technologies offer some promise of helping writers notice and correct errors, but they are under-researched in composition and rarely well-integrated into pedagogical praxis. This research on the grammar and style checker in Microsoft Word considers the program as an electronic checklist for making decisions about what counts as an error in a given rhetorical situation. This study also offers a theory of error grounded in the idea of attention, or cognitive load, some of which an electronic checker can relieve in its areas of its greatest effectiveness, which this research quantifies. The proposed theory of error forms the basis for a pedagogy of register, understood as typified style, and establishes that error itself can be a strategic style move.

This thesis tackles the problem of automatically synthesizing motions of close-character interactions which appear in animations of wrestling and dancing. Designing such motions is a daunting task even for experienced animators as the close contacts between the characters can easily result in collisions or penetrations of the body segments. The main problem lies in the conventional representation of the character states that is based on the joint angles or the joint positions. As the relationships between the body segments are not encoded in such a representation, the path-planning for valid motions to switch from one posture to another requires intense random sampling and collision detection in the state-space. In order to tackle this problem, we consider to represent the status of the characters using the spatial relationship of the characters. Describing the scene using the spatial relationships can ease users and animators to analyze the scene and synthesize close interactions of characters. We first propose a method to encode the relationship of the body segments by using the Gauss Linking Integral (GLI), which is a value that specifies how much the body segments are winded around each other. We present how it can be applied for content-based retrieval of motion data of close interactions, and also for synthesis of close character interactions. Next, we propose a representation called Interaction Mesh, which is a volumetric mesh composed of points located at the joint position of the characters and vertices of the environment. This raw representation is more general compared to the tangle-based representation as it can describe interactions that do not involve any tangling nor contacts. We describe how it can be applied for motion editing and retargeting of close character interaction while avoiding penetration and pass-throughs of the body segments. The application of our research is not limited to computer animation but also to robotics, where making robots conduct complex tasks such as tangling, wrapping, holding and knotting are essential to let them assist humans for the daily life.

<p>Gene regulation is a complex and tightly controlled process that defines cell function in physiological and abnormal states. Programmable gene repression technologies enable loss-of-function studies for dissecting gene regulation mechanisms and represent an exciting avenue for gene therapy. Established and recently developed methods now exist to modulate gene sequence, epigenetic marks, transcriptional activity, and post-transcriptional processes, providing unprecedented genetic control over cell phenotype. Our objective was to apply and develop targeted repression technologies for regenerative medicine, genomics, and gene therapy applications. We used RNA interference to control cell cycle regulation in myogenic differentiation and enhance the proliferative capacity of tissue engineered cartilage constructs. These studies demonstrate how modulation of a single gene can be used to guide cell differentiation for regenerative medicine strategies. RNA-guided gene regulation with the CRISPR/Cas9 system has rapidly expanded the targeted repression repertoire from silencing single protein-coding genes to modulation of genes, promoters, and other distal regulatory elements. In order to facilitate its adaptation for basic research and translational applications, we demonstrated the high degree of specificity for gene targeting, gene silencing, and chromatin modification possible with Cas9 repressors. The specificity and effectiveness of RNA-guided transcriptional repressors for silencing endogenous genes are promising characteristics for mechanistic studies of gene regulation and cell phenotype. Furthermore, our results support the use of Cas9-based repressors as a platform for novel gene therapy strategies. We developed an in vivo AAV-based gene repression system for silencing endogenous genes in a mouse model. Together, these studies demonstrate the utility of gene repression tools for guiding cell phenotype and the potential of the RNA-guided CRISPR/Cas9 platform for applications such as causal studies of gene regulatory mechanisms and gene therapy.</p> / Dissertation

This paper thoroughly examines the production of the thesis short film, Armed With A Heart, from conception to completion. Each area of the film's production is carefully dissected, including the writing, production design, cinematography, editing, sound, technology, workflow, and direction. Each of these areas contain a myriad of decisions that were made in effort to fulfill the overall vision of the movie as being a character driven, psychological thriller produced with a high production value. The aforementioned decisions are discussed at length. Documented feedback from test audiences is also reviewed in an attempt to objectively critique the final film.

Shadows are ubiquitous in image and video, and their removal is of interest in both Computer Vision and Graphics. In this thesis, four methods for interactive shadow removal from single images are presented. Their improvements are made in user interaction, quality and robustness of shadow removal. We also show our state-of-the-art ground truth data set with variable scene categories for shadow removal and applications for shadow editing and its extension to video data processing.