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Creating sanctuary within an inhospitable world is one of man’s inherent needs. Even in the desert, Man’s sole means of survival is determined by whether he can find oasis: a fertile place within the vast expanse of the dry desert which provides the contrast of water and shade. In medieval times, Man feared the unknown world of the dense wilderness and used the enclosed garden – hortus conclusus- as a means to protect himself from nature and to create his own internal world of safety. Today, in the 21st century, Man is contending with the harsh conditions of the contemporary urban landscape: “a hybrid landscape in which the distinction between city and environs is erased” (Aben and de Wit 1999:250). which continues to develop horizontally and vertically. This contributes to presenting and creating fragmented and unstable conditions, which need to be addressed. Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit (1999) are authors of the book, The Enclosed Garden: History and Development of the Hortus Conclusis and its Reintroduction into the present-day urban landscape. Both writers believe that if the urban wilderness of today can be likened to the feared natural wilderness of the middle ages, then the hortus conclusus or enclosed garden typology could serve as a landscape design tool which provides man with sanctuary and relief from the city. The enclosed garden typology has withstood and transcended a variety of geographical, climactic and cultural conditions over many centuries. Its adaptability and survival lies in its ability to be the “mediator between dwelling and nature, building and landscape” (Baker 2012:22). Despite its relevance as an architectural and landscape design tool, it is not commonly considered for use in the present day practice of landscape architecture. Nor is it used by designers to solve the problems which exist in the current urban landscape. It is for this reason that Aben and de wit (1999) have thoroughly documented and analysed the development of the enclosed garden typology from its time of origin, to the present day. In addition to this, they have devised four new theories of enclosed garden typology (based on historical precedent), which they believe, provide suitable spatial design principles which can be applied to the contemporary urban landscape. The theory of enclosed gardens has validity due to the fact that it critiques the current urban environment. Investigating and testing this unfamiliar theory of enclosed gardens is thus a relevant topic for landscape architectural research. This dissertation will perform a series of spatial design experiments which will apply and test these theories in order to determine the enclosed garden’s relevance as a successful urban landscape design tool and whether it should be used in the context of Johannesburg’s open space system. / Dissertation (ML(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / ML(Prof) / Unrestricted

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Wind and waves play a major role in important ocean dynamical processes, such as the exchange of heat, momentum and gases between atmosphere and ocean, that greatly contributes to the earth climate and marine lives. Knowledge on wind and wave weather and climate is crucial for a wide range of applications, including oceanographic studies, maritime activities and ocean engineering. Despite being one of the important world shipping routes, the wind-wave characteristics in the Red Sea are yet to be fully explored. Because of the scarcity of waves data in the Red Sea, numerical models become crucial and provide very powerful tools to extrapolate wind and wave data in space, and backward and forward in time. Unlike open oceans, enclosed basins wave have different characteristics, mainly because of their local generation processes. The complex orography on both sides of the Red Sea makes the local wind, and consequently wave, modeling very challenging. This thesis considers the modeling of wind-wave characteristics in the Red Sea, including their climate variability and trends using state-of-the-art numerical models and all available observations. Different approaches are investigated to model and understand the general and unusual wind and wave conditions in the basin using standard global meteorological products and customised regional wind and wave models. After studying and identifying the main characteristics of the wind-wave variability in the Red Sea, we demonstrate the importance of generating accurate atmospheric forcing through data assimilation for reliable wave simulations. In particular, we show that the state-of-the-art physical formulation of wave models is not suitable to model the unique situation of the two opposing wind-waves systems in the Red Sea Convergence Zone, and propose and successfully test a modification to the input and white-capping source functions to address this problem. We further investigate the climate variability and trends of wind and waves in the Red Sea using high-resolution wind and wave reanalyses that have been generated as part of this thesis. An innovative spectral partition technique is first applied to distinguish the dominant wave systems. Our analysis demonstrates that winds, and consequently waves, exhibit a decreasing trend in the Red Sea. This is mainly attributed to a remarkable weakening of the winds protruding from the Mediterranean Sea. We also use these highresolution reanalyses to assess the potential for harvesting wind and wave energy from the Red Sea.

Thesis (M.A. Agricultural Management (Plant Production)) -- University of Limpopo, 2023 / Okra is an indigenous vegetable consumed in Southern Africa. Its growth and yield are negatively affected by water and nutrient deficit. There is insufficient scientific information on the growth and yield attributes of underutilised indigenous vegetables such as okra. The information on enhancement and evaluation of growth, yield, nutrients, and phytochemical compositions of okra using the climate-smart OMET growing technique has not been documented. The Organic Medium Enclosed Trough (OMET) system was developed as a non-drainable growing technique which improves crop yield by reducing water and nutrient seepage. The aim of this study was to develop scientific information on the effects of the OMET growing technique and growing environment on growth and yield, nutritional composition and phytochemical composition in okra. The objectives of this study were to (1) investigate the effect of the OMET growing technique and growing environment on growth and yield attributes, (2) nutritional composition and (3) the phytochemical composition of okra grown under greenhouse and micro-plots conditions. To achieve the objectives, four-week-old okra seedlings were transplanted on the established OMET and non-OMET growing technique concurrently in both the growing environment (greenhouse and micro-plot) following a randomised complete block design (RCBD) for a period of 110 days, with three replications and twelve plants per replicate. The amount of irrigation water used in both experiments was recorded until harvest and computed as cumulative irrigation water. The mean separation was done using a parametric T-test at the significance level of 5% using the Genstat version 18.0 statistical package. The growth attributes which included plant height and stem diameter (n=9) were taken on a weekly basis. At harvest, yield components including the number of branches per plant, plant biomass, fresh pod weight, number of pods per plant, fresh pod length and fresh pod diameter width were recorded. The harvested leaves and pods were then used for nutritional and phytochemical composition analysis. The OMET growing technique significantly (p≤0.05) affected the growth and yield attributes of okra regardless of the growing condition. At termination (110 days after transplanting), the OMET growing technique had significantly increased the stem diameter by 40 and 37%, while the plant height was increased by 68 and 48% under greenhouse and micro-plot experiments respectively. When evaluating the yield attributes, a similar trend was observed where the OMET system significantly increased the yield attributes of okra as follows: biomass by 64 and 50%, number of branches by 67 and 50%, number of pods per plant by 60 and 49%, fresh pod weight by 75 and 53%, pod length by 64 and 51% in both the growing environment, while the pod diameter width was increased by 68% in the greenhouse environment and there was no significant difference on the micro-plot trial. The OMET growing technique significantly affected the nutritional composition of okra leaves and pods (p≤0.05). Both the essential and non-essential amino acids were determined and quantified in the leaves and pods of okra grown under OMET and Non-OMET growing techniques. The OMET growing technique significantly improved the essential amino acid composition of okra leaves with Thr (0.57 mg/kg), Val (0.70 mg/kg) Leu (0.90 mg/kg) and Phe (1.03 mg/kg) being higher than the non-OMET grown okra leaves. The pods showed that the OMET growing technique also significantly improved the accumulation of all the tested non-essential amino acids with Lys being the highest (p≤0.05). It was observed that the micro-plot experiment resulted in the OMET growing technique significantly enhancing the accumulation of all the tested essential amino acids in both the leaves and pods with Phe and Lys (1.53 and 0.70 mg/kg) being the highest in the leaves and pods respectively. The non-essential amino acid composition was also significantly improved using the OMET growing technique in both the leaves and pod with Glu.. The non-essential amino acid composition was also significantly improved using the OMET growing technique in both the leaves and pod of okra grown under micro-plot with Glu (2.73 mg/kg and 4.05 mg/kg) being the highest respectively. The OMET growing technique showed the ability to maintain a daily recommended amino acids ratio coefficient equal to 1 by consuming 100g of the tested okra. The nutritional composition which includes proteins, mineral elements and amino acids of the tested okra leaves and pods grown using the OMET system regardless of the growing condition has resulted in an increase in the % protein content compared to the non-OMET grown okra. Nutritional elements Ca, K, P, Mg and Na were predominant in okra leaves and pods irrespective of the growing environment and growing technique (OMET). The results generated showed that the OMET system significantly (p≤0.05) improved the nutritional composition in okra leaves and pods regardless of the growing condition, though the micro-plot experiment resulted in higher nutritional composition as compared to the greenhouse experiment. Untargeted metabolites, phenolic acids and antioxidant activity were also determined and compared for both the okra leaves and pods extract grown using the OMET and non-OMET growing techniques in both the growing conditions. For untargeted metabolites, methanol extracts were analysed using UPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS. The UPLC-MS untargeted metabolites profile detected 161 polar analytes classified within the glucuronic acid, tricarboxylic acids, O-glycosyl derivatives, flavonoid-O-glycosides, iridoid o-glycosides and terpene glycosides. Explorative principle component analysis demonstrated three main clusters according to metabolites heterogeneity in plant tissue (pods and leaves) and growing conditions (greenhouse or mirco-plot). There was major heterogeneity in the metabolome profile of leaves tissue along the vertical PC1 suggesting their metabolic moiety. Okra leaves grown under micro-plot were highly predominated by the 2-O-caffeoylglucaric acid (286.13 mg/kg) and 2-(E)-O-feruloyl-D-galactaric acid (111.69 mg/kg). Leaves samples grown in non-OMET were predominated by citroside A (412.04 mg/kg). Okra pods grown under OMET micro-plot enhanced the accumulation of quercetin 3-galactoside (87.83 mg/kg) and quercetin 3-galactoside-7-glucoside (150.00 mg/kg). The OMET under greenhouse conditions encouraged the accumulation of icariside F2 and benzyl beta-D-apiofuranosy (49.21 mg/kg). The results generated showed that flavonoids were the major contributors to the total antioxidant activity and OMET enhanced the accumulation of the majority of the metabolites. Phytochemical analysis showed that the OMET growing technique significantly increased the concentration of total phenolics and flavonoids in both the growing environment (p≤0.05). The OMET growing technique significantly affected the antioxidant activity in both growing conditions. / Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and National Research Foundation (NRF)

A segurança contra incêndios ainda é um tema incipiente no Brasil. Em São Paulo a primeira legislação data de 1983, sendo conseqüência das tragédias ocorridas nos anos de 1970, como a do Edifício Andraus, em 1972, e a do Edifício Joelma em 1975. Este trabalho procura discorrer sobre o projeto de saídas de emergência dos edifícios escolares construídos pelo Estado de São Paulo e em especial, os mais contemporâneos, que estão elevando seu gabarito de altura e concentrando sua população. Inicialmente fez-se uma abordagem histórica onde procurou-se examinar as principais características tipológicas das escolas construídas pelo Estado de São Paulo e, no capítulo seguinte, um levantamento das legislações edilícias produzidas pelo Município e pelo Estado de São Paulo, sempre com foco na segurança contra incêndio e, em especial, nas saídas de emergência. Em seguida, procurou-se compreender o conceito de desempenho, os principais modelos matemáticos utilizados na segurança contra incêndios e as variáveis que podem influenciar um processo de abandono, tais como: a velocidade das pessoas, o tempo de resposta ao alarme e o comportamento humano em situações de incêndio. Por fim, algumas simulações de abandono por computador para quatro escolas foram realizadas, utilizando o modelo matemático denominado buildingExodus, com o objetivo de avaliar as saídas de emergência e contribuir para o aprofundamento e a divulgação do conhecimento sobre o assunto. / Fire safety is still an incipient subject in Brazil. In São Paulo, the first piece of legislation dates back to 1983, being a consequence of the tragedies that occurred in the 1970s, such as the one in the Andraus Building in 1972 and the one in the Joelma Building in 1975. This work aims at discoursing on the design of the emergency exits of the school buildings that have been constructed by the State of São Paulo, especially the design of the most contemporary structures, which have been increasing in height and concentrating their population. Initially, a historical perspective is presented, followed by an examination of the principal characteristics of the schools that the State of São Paulo has built and by a study of the building regulations that the City and the State of São Paulo have created, always focusing on fire safety and, especially, on emergency exits. After that, this work tries to understand the performance-based concept, the principal mathematical models utilized in fire safety and the factors that may influence an evacuation process, such as: peoples travel speeds, the time delay to start evacuating on hearing a fire alarm, and the human behavior in fire situations. Finally, some computer-based evacuation simulations in four schools were done, utilizing the mathematical model called buildingExodus, in order to evaluate the emergency exits and to contribute to the further understanding and dissemination of the subject.

A segurança contra incêndios ainda é um tema incipiente no Brasil. Em São Paulo a primeira legislação data de 1983, sendo conseqüência das tragédias ocorridas nos anos de 1970, como a do Edifício Andraus, em 1972, e a do Edifício Joelma em 1975. Este trabalho procura discorrer sobre o projeto de saídas de emergência dos edifícios escolares construídos pelo Estado de São Paulo e em especial, os mais contemporâneos, que estão elevando seu gabarito de altura e concentrando sua população. Inicialmente fez-se uma abordagem histórica onde procurou-se examinar as principais características tipológicas das escolas construídas pelo Estado de São Paulo e, no capítulo seguinte, um levantamento das legislações edilícias produzidas pelo Município e pelo Estado de São Paulo, sempre com foco na segurança contra incêndio e, em especial, nas saídas de emergência. Em seguida, procurou-se compreender o conceito de desempenho, os principais modelos matemáticos utilizados na segurança contra incêndios e as variáveis que podem influenciar um processo de abandono, tais como: a velocidade das pessoas, o tempo de resposta ao alarme e o comportamento humano em situações de incêndio. Por fim, algumas simulações de abandono por computador para quatro escolas foram realizadas, utilizando o modelo matemático denominado buildingExodus, com o objetivo de avaliar as saídas de emergência e contribuir para o aprofundamento e a divulgação do conhecimento sobre o assunto. / Fire safety is still an incipient subject in Brazil. In São Paulo, the first piece of legislation dates back to 1983, being a consequence of the tragedies that occurred in the 1970s, such as the one in the Andraus Building in 1972 and the one in the Joelma Building in 1975. This work aims at discoursing on the design of the emergency exits of the school buildings that have been constructed by the State of São Paulo, especially the design of the most contemporary structures, which have been increasing in height and concentrating their population. Initially, a historical perspective is presented, followed by an examination of the principal characteristics of the schools that the State of São Paulo has built and by a study of the building regulations that the City and the State of São Paulo have created, always focusing on fire safety and, especially, on emergency exits. After that, this work tries to understand the performance-based concept, the principal mathematical models utilized in fire safety and the factors that may influence an evacuation process, such as: peoples travel speeds, the time delay to start evacuating on hearing a fire alarm, and the human behavior in fire situations. Finally, some computer-based evacuation simulations in four schools were done, utilizing the mathematical model called buildingExodus, in order to evaluate the emergency exits and to contribute to the further understanding and dissemination of the subject.

Detecting unusual movement (falls) for elderly people in enclosed environments is receiving increasing attention and is likely to have massive potential social and economic impact. In this thesis, new intelligent computer vision processing based techniques are proposed to detect falls in indoor environments for senior citizens living independently, such as in intelligent homes. Different types of features extracted from video-camera recordings are exploited together with both background subtraction analysis and machine learning techniques. Initially, an improved background subtraction method is used to extract the region of a person in the recording of a room environment. A selective updating technique is introduced for adapting the change of the background model to ensure that the human body region will not be absorbed into the background model when it is static for prolonged periods of time. Since two-dimensional features can generate false alarms and are not invariant to different directions, more robust three-dimensional features are next extracted from a three-dimensional person representation formed from video-camera measurements of multiple calibrated video-cameras. The extracted three-dimensional features are applied to construct a single Gaussian model using the maximum likelihood technique. This can be used to distinguish falls from non-fall activity by comparing the model output with a single. In the final works, new fall detection schemes which use only one uncalibrated video-camera are tested in a real elderly person s home environment. These approaches are based on two-dimensional features which describe different human body posture. The extracted features are applied to construct a supervised method for posture classification for abnormal posture detection. Certain rules which are set according to the characteristics of fall activities are lastly used to build a robust fall detection model.

Located at the northern edge of the Northern Gulf of Alaska (NGOA), Prince William Sound(PWS) is a small, two-strait semi-enclosed sea. The general ocean circulation pattern inside PWS is significantly affected by external forcings, for instance, the large-scale circulation in NGOA, atmospheric pressure and surface winds, surface heating/cooling, runoff, and tides. Motivated by multi-year experience with a well-validated, quasi-operational ocean circulation nowcast/forecast system for PWS (viz., Extended PWS Nowcast/Forecast System (EPWS/NFS)), the present study addresses some aspects of the PWS response to various external forcings, via numerical simulations. Based on the Princeton Ocean Model (POM), four numerical implementations have been examined, viz., PWS-POM, Extended PWS-POM (EPWS-POM), Idealized PWS-POM (IPWS-POM), and a 2-D tidal model. These implementations are used to simulate physical processes with various spatial and temporal scales in PWS. A series of numerical simulations are conducted, driven by various external forcings ranging from large scale and mesoscale circulation in NGOA represented by the Global Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM), to atmospheric pressure observed by National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) buoys and mesoscale winds predicted by Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), and to tides simulated by the 2-D tidal model. These simulations, along with analysis from a Helmholtz resonance model, demonstrate and help interpret some phenomena in PWS; for instance, barotropic Helmholtz resonance in coastal sea levels, and volume transports through the two PWS straits, and a dominant cyclonic gyre in the Central Sound in August and September. The simulation results are used to study a wide range of oceanic phenomena in PWS; e.g., two-layer/three-layer baroclinic transports through the straits, a "transition band" in the coherence pattern between volume transports through the two straits, mesoscale circulation in the Central Sound, the deep water circulation, and the annual tidal energy budget.

En este artículo, sostenemos que las novelas Rosa Cuchillo y La hora azul proyectan procesos individuales de duelo en un orden social mítico que se limita a reproducir el fantasma de la nación cercada (Ubilluz) como (seudo) propuesta de solución al conflicto armado acontecido en el Perú entre 1980-2000. En Rosa Cuchillo, la protagonista Rosa Cuchillo atraviesa un proceso de duelo por haber perdido a su hijo subversivo, Liborio, mientras que, en La hora azul, el protagonista Adrián Ormache sufre un proceso de duelo a causa de una crisis de la figura paterna idealizada que tenía de su fallecido padre militar. Estas experiencias individuales de duelo tienen como desenlace la apertura al orden social a través del mito del eternoretorno (Debord), en Rosa Cuchillo, y del mito del progreso (Benjamin) en La hora azul. Situados en el tiempo mítico, se hacen tangibles los alcances sociales de las novelas entendidos como una reproducción de propuestas que no cuestionan el fantasma de la nación cercada: Rosa Cuchillo propone un pachacuti de runas, mientras que La hora azul propone una ética tutelar que mantiene el status quo. / In this paper, I propose that the novels Rosa Cuchillo and La hora azulproject individual processes of mourning in a mythical social order thatlimits itself to reproduce the phantom of the enclosed nation (Ubilluz) asa (seudo) proposal to solve the internal conflict that took place in Perubetween 1980-2000. In Rosa Cuchillo the main character, Rosa Cuchillo,goes through a process of mourning due to the loss of his terrorist son,Liborio, whereas in La hora azul the main character, Adrián Ormache,undergoes a process of mourning due to the crisis of the idealized paternalfigure he had of his dead military father. These individual experiences ofmourning result in an opening to the social order by means of the mythof the eternal return (Debord) in Rosa Cuchillo and the myth of progress(Benjamin) in La hora azul. Located in a mythical time, the social consequencesof the novels become apparent: they reproduce proposals thatdo not question the phantom of the enclosed nation, since Rosa Cuchilloproposes a pachacuti of runas, whereas La hora azul suggests a form oftutelary ethics that maintains the status quo.