No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

Horatio Lord Nelson, Britain's most famous naval figure, revolutionized what victory meant to the British Royal Navy and the British populace at the turn of the nineteenth century. But his legacy continued after his death in 1805, and a century after his untimely passing Nelson meant as much or more to Britain than he did during his lifetime. This thesis utilizes primary sources from the British Royal Navy and the general British public to explore what the cultural memory of Horatio Nelson's life and achievements meant to Britain throughout the Edwardian era and to the dawn of the First World War. An introductory literature review provides a thorough explanation of how Nelson's legacy has been perceived by past historians and how this legacy will be examined throughout the thesis. The manner in which Nelson was viewed by both his naval contemporaries and the general British public during his lifetime is then surveyed, with a specific focus on the outpouring of national grief that followed Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. A major portion of the thesis explores how Nelson's legacy developed throughout the century following his death. Separate studies of Nelson's professional memory among his Royal Navy successors and his cultural memory in British society as it became ever more focused on naval concerns follow; these take the thesis chronologically up through the final decades of the nineteenth century and are then combined in a discussion of the degree to which Nelson's legacy permeated all Britons, regardless of profession, in the early years of the twentieth century. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of the impact Nelson's legacy had on Britain during the early months of the First World War and a broader analysis of how the cultural and professional memory of Horatio Nelson's naval achievements in 1805 created an atmosphere in which a naval victory decisive enough to satisfy all aspects of British society was impossible in 1914.

Clear-sky top-of-atmosphere (TOA) fluxes are important in estimating the impact of clouds on our climate. In this study, we quantitatively compare the clear-sky fluxes measurements of the Clouds and the Earths Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument to clear-sky fluxes from two reanalysis, NASA's Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Application (MERRA), and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast Interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim). In the first comparison, we compare observed fluxes from individual cloud-free field-of- views to the reanalyses. In the second comparison, we compare monthly averaged observed clear-sky fluxes to those from the reanalyses. Monthly clear-sky fluxes are calculated by averaging fluxes from cloud-free regions. In both comparisons, the fluxes generally agree within +/- 10 W/m^2. Finally, we show that, while the differences between the fluxes of observations and the reanalyses are several W/m2, the inter-annual anomalies agree much better, with zonal and global average inter-annual anomalies typically agreeing within 1 W/m^2. The longwave clear-sky anomalies show excellent agreement even when comparing individual grid points, whereas the shortwave clear-sky anomalies are generally smaller at individual grid points.

This thesis seeks a portable and accessible model for centralising photographs in enquiry. I argue that photographs are potent sites of human value making but are typically relegated to illustrating word-based considerations, while the vast mass of ‘ordinary’ photographs are excluded from even this function. The context in which I develop and test the model is the heroic era of Antarctic exploration, a time and place that is dominated by an entrenched mythology, and where photographs have been assigned a merely pictorial role. In seeking to reactivate these objects and pictures I turn to Elizabeth Edwards’ notion of using photographs to think with, tracing the evolution of this idea through generations of thinking about photography, and emphasising recent writers such as Geoffrey Batchen, Margaret Olin and Joan Schwartz. My work confirms a resonance with Edwards’ thinking but also a need to emphasise photographic materiality and the photographic collective. Further, I demonstrate that this thinking also resonates with the work of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes, confirming a construction of photographs as generative anchoring points in networks of identification that are both culturalised and subjective. My model for thinking with photographs draws in Kenneth Burke’s pentad of dramatistic analysis, arguing a productive fit with his concern to filter the rhetorical detritus of human behaviour as an entrée to viewing core motivations. The pentad has not previously been used to think with photographs but it is able to be deployed successfully for this purpose by refreshing its operation in line with writers such as Robert Cathcart, James Chesebro and Gregory Clark. For Antarctica, thinking with photographs involves negotiating margins – depicted, physical, temporal and ideological, and in addressing the photographic mass this thesis argues a reactivation of margins as points of insight rather than barriers of exclusion. Recent writers such as Francis Spufford, Stephen Pyne, John Wylie and Kathryn Yusoff have found new ways to construct the performance of Antarctic exploration, and, in this spirit, the thesis enacts Burke’s pentad to think with the photograph collection of ‘second tier’ Antarctic explorer, Ernest Joyce. It shows Antarctic exploration to be also an intensely personal experience, with the power to overhaul mindsets but offering no guarantee that new expectations can be delivered on. In Joyce’s photographs it finds a nexus of contested narratives and contested photographies, and the seeds of a Benjaminian modernity that speak of the personal implications of the dissolution of meta-narratives.

Wind farm assessment is a costly and time consuming process when it is planned by traditional methods such as a met mast. Therefore, new models have been established and used for the wind farm assessment to ease the process of wind farm planning. These models are Global-regional models which add to cost efficiency and time saving. There are several types of these models in the market that have different accuracy. This thesis discusses and uses in simulations Global – regional model data outputs from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Weather Research Forecast WRF and ECMWF, which is currently producing ERA-Interim, global reanalysis of the data-rich period since 1989 .The goal of the master's thesis is to see whether it is useful and efficient to use Global – regional weather model data such as the Era Interim Global Reanalysis Model data for wind assessment by comparing it with the real data series (met mast) located in Maglarp, in the south of Sweden.The comparison shows that in that specific area (hindcast) at Maglarp, in the south of Sweden, very promising results for planning a wind farm for a 100m, 120m and 38m heights.

No description available.

My dissertation involves a critique of the concept of life or seimei as it emerged in modern use during the Meiji era (1868-1912). Specifically, I have outlined the conditions of possibility for thinking seimei at particular moments in the development of the modern, market-centered Japanese nation-state in historical and literary terms such that I can begin to use these conditions to think its impossibilities. In short, I argue that a central condition of possibility for thinking life in its modern, historical form is a process of individuation that takes hold of and shapes bodies at an ontological level. By critiquing life and its ontology of individuation, I unearth the traces of an impossible “apriori collectivism” - that is, a collectivism not merely reducible to a congregation of individuals, but originally collective – buried under the calls for individual freedom, self-help, and industrialization that were at the heart of the Meiji era’s modernization project. I track this apriori collectivism in a lineage relating (through non-relation) the mutual aid societies or mujin-kô of the Edo period to the life insurance industry of the Meiji 10s and 20s. I then use this material history of life as backdrop to my study of the literary trends in the latter decades of the Meiji era, and end with a consideration of the political and aesthetic implications seimei has for thought by taking up a study of Iwano Hômei’s Shinpiteki hanjûshugi (Mystical Demi-animalism).

Aquesta tesi examina la relació i el contacte entre "llengües mitjanes" i "llengües internacionals" a Catalunya i Estònia des d'un punt de vista comparat en l'era 'glocal'. Partint de la comparació dels contextos històrics i sociodemogràfics, s'analitzen els canvis en aquests camps i la manera com aquests canvis han influenciat i/o modificat les habilitats, els comportaments i les ideologies lingüístiques de cadascun dels grups de parlants en contacte.Mitjançant dades recollides amb un treball de camp de diversos mesos a Tallin i a Barcelona amb eines metodològiques eminentment qualitatives (entrevistes en profunditat, grups de discussió, observació participativa i enquesta etnogràfica), s'observa que la relació entre aquests tipus de llengües ("mitjanes" i "internacionals") té uns trets particulars, els quals s'interpreten en aquest estudi des dels paradigmes teòrics de les ideologies lingüístiques, la sociocomplexitat i el paper de la globalització en la configuració linguoidentitaria.El treball aconsegueix identificar les diferents posicions des de les quals interactuen els parlants en cada context fixant-se en les opinions o punts de vista expressats explícitament o implícita sobre la situació sociolingüística del seu entorn més immediat. El ventall de posicions que pot ocupar cada grup és ampli i va des d'una acceptació pragmàtica de la convivència etnolingüística fins a una reivindicació més emfàtica dels drets lingüístics per part de cada grup.A partir de la comparació d'aquests dos casos podem traçar, doncs, certs paral·lelismes interessants entre cada grup lingüístic analitzat els quals poden il·luminar aspectes rellevants a tenir en compte en el tractament sociopolític de cada situació; però el que sobretot es destaca és el paper del nivell ideològico-representacional a l'hora de co-construir uns contextos sociolingüístics determinats. A més a més, el paper de la globalització és també crucial en tant que ressalta la complexitat de les realitats estudiades, situant el multilingüisme en una posició aparentment contradictòria: com a quelcom a priori problemàtic socialment per a les persones, grups o institucions, però alhora com a un recurs social i comunicatiu important per a la identitat i el reconeixement equitatiu dels distints grups lingüístics en contacte. / This thesis examines the relationship and contact between "medium-sized languages" and "international languages" in Catalonia and Estonia from a comparative point of view in the 'glocal' era. The comparison is based on the analysis of the demographic and historical contexts, and how the more recent changes in these fields have influenced and/or changed the language skills, behaviors and language ideologies of each group of speakers in contact.Using data collected by several months of fieldwork in Tallinn and Barcelona with qualitative methodological tools (interviews, focused-group discussions, participant observation and an ethnographic survey) the study shows that the relationship between these languages ("medium-sized" and "international") has some special features, which are interpreted in this study from the theoretical paradigms of language ideologies, the socio-complexity and the role of globalization in shaping aspects of language and identity.The work achieves to identify the different positions from which speakers interact in each context by highlighting their opinions or views expressed explicitly or implicitly about the sociolinguistic situation of their immediate surroundings. The range of positions that can be occupied by each group is broad, from a pragmatic acceptance of the coexistence with the other ethno-linguistic group to more emphatic claims of language rights by each group.From the comparison of these two cases, some interesting parallels can be traced between each of the studied linguistic groups, which can illuminate important aspects to consider in dealing with the socio-political situation, but what the study emphasizes is the role of the ideological and representational level when co-constructing a particular sociolinguistic context. In addition, the role of globalization is also crucial in that it highlights the complexity of the realities studied, placing multilingualism in a seemingly contradictory position: a priori as something socially problematic for people, groups or institutions, but both as a social resource and communications important to the identity and equitable recognition of the different linguistic groups in contact.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Education Management, Law and Policy))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Includes abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references.