The study explores the mediating role architecture should play towards the re-integration of degenerate urban spaces, within existing contemporary urban environment. The architecture proposed, in this case a Public Community Information Centre, furthermore intends to find a workable solution, in mediating between society, the city, and the environment that will acknowledge the processes associated with sustainable social production in the quest to eradicate a fragmented, and culturally segregated society. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / Unrestricted / 2013-4-17

Masters of Science / Studies on snake competitive interactions have relatively been well documented globally, however, those examples tend to be dominated by non-African examples. Africa has a large and spectacular reptile diversity and yet robust and empirical studies on snake population ecology remain poorly understood or documented. Given the close phylogenetic relationship between the two species, as well as the remarkable similarities in overall appearance, morphology, reproductive biology, and most importantly geographic distribution, Psammophis crucifer and Psammophylax rhombeatus offered an ideal study system in which to ask questions related to interspecific competition and niche partitioning. Specifically I asked (1) whether broad scale geographic sympatry is facilitated by fine-scale allopatry through separation of space-use, and (2) whether the diets of the two species provided evidence of partitioning along the dietary niche. To answer these questions, I first quantified relative abundance of the two species at a fine scale, and secondly used existing dietary data to quantify dietary niche overlap. Even though P. rhombeatus was always more abundant in my sample, I found no evidence of space-use partitioning in this study, instead it showed a positive correlation in their abundance, and therefore suggesting space was not a limiting resource. Pianka niche overlap analysis showed significant differences in their feeding habits whereby P. rhombeatus had a broader diet which included mammals and birds, whereas P. crucifer predominantly fed on lizards and other snakes. In conclusion, my study suggests that across multiple geographic scales these two snakes use the same spatial resources and are able to co-exist by partitioning food resources. Lastly, my study serves to provoke more African studies of this nature with suitable candidate snake species.

Ce travail a pour objectif d'élaborer une description phénoménologique de l'amour en suivant pour cela trois axes d'investigation : dans une première partie, il s'agit d'analyser l'amour comme modalité de l'intentionnalité, telle que la thématisent chacun de leur côté Scheler et Husserl, ce qui suppose l'élucidation du rapport de l'amour aux valeurs qu'il dévoile pour l'un ou constitue pour l'autre. Dans une deuxième partie, à travers la reprise du débat entre Heidegger et Binswanger quant au statut de l'amour dans la constitution existentiale du Dasein, l'expérience de l'amour est comprise comme un mode original de configuration du monde : l'horizon est alors l'articulation de l'amour et de la question de l'être. Enfin, dans une troisième partie, il s'agit de combiner ces deux approches dans la perspective d'une phénoménologie de l'existence qui s'efforce de saisir le phénomène de l'amour dans son sens humain, c'est-à-dire détaché de tout horizon théologique. / Our purpose in this work is to build a phenomenological description of human love through three ways of investigation. First, we describe love as a mode of intentionnality, with Scheler's and Husserl's analysis, in order to elucidate how love reveals or constitutes values. Then, in the second part, we approach the phenomenological problem of love as configuration of a new world, by reconsidering the debate between Heidegger and Binswanger about his function within the Dasein existential analysis. By doing so, the problem of love appears in his connection with ontology. In the third part of this work, we finally try to expose the human meaning of love, which appears in Sartre's phenomenology. By including love in a phenomenology of existence, Sartre allows us to understand how it must be described with the opposition of authenticity and inauthenticity, that is to say without including any theological presupposition in the phenomenological description.

Was ist ein Leben? Kann man es knapp erzählen, etwa im Lexikonformat? Man hat es versucht, im 17. Jahrhundert etwa Louis Moréri in seinem ''Grand Dictionnaire Historique'', der 1674 in der ersten Auflage und 1759 in der zehnten erschien. In dieser Zeitspanne publizierten auch in Deutschland mehrere Verleger, zumal in Leipzig, verstärkt biografische Lexika, von denen das größte paradoxerweise am wenigsten bekannt ist: Johann Heinrich Zedlers ''Großes vollständiges Universal-Lexicon'' in 68 Folianten, ein völlig ungehobener Schatz biografischer Information.

Bakgrund: Bröstcancer är näst vanligaste cancerformen som drabbar yngre kvinnor. Vid yngre åldrar är sjukdomen oftast avancerad med högre mortalitet och skapar stort lidande för de drabbade kvinnorna. Syfte: Belysa yngre kvinnors tankar och upplevelser som infinner sig i livet efter en bröstcancerdiagnos. Metod: Kvalitativ metod genomfördes av bloggar där examensarbetet använt sig av innehållsanalys för att kunna beskriva en ny helhet av texten. Resultat: Resultatet visade att kvinnor upplevde svårigheter i att strukturera upp sin vardag, då de fick leva med ständig rädsla. Leva med sjukdomen innefattade mentala och kroppsliga påfrestningar. Trots detta fann kvinnorna ändå positiva stunder som ingav styrka och energi. Att orka leva i nuet och våga planera för framtiden med vänner och anhöriga, gjorde att det infann sig känsla av samhörighet hos de drabbade kvinnorna.  Konklusion: Det är centralt med ett bemötande från sjuksköterskan byggt på empati och förståelse för att förebygga vårdlidande. / Background: Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer affecting younger women. The disease is usually more advanced with younger women, and has a higher mortality rate resulting in greater suffering for the women and their relatives. Existential concern and questions arise within the women and they usually trust the health service for advice, support and answers. Objective: To shed light on younger women’s thoughts and experiences that occur in life after a breast cancer diagnosis. Method: Qualitative method was carried out by blogs where the degree project used content analysis to describe a new whole of the text. Finding: The results showed that the women experienced difficulties with daily organisation and had a constant feeling of fear. Living with the diesease resulted in mental and physical stress. However the women had moments of positivity whitch in turn lead to increased strengh and energy. Being able to live in the moment and daring to plan for the future with friends and family lead to a sense of belonging amongst the affected women. Conclusion: It´s important that the nurse’s treatment is based on empathy and an understanding to prevent care suffering.

The investigation of positive steady states to reaction diffusion models in bounded domains with Dirichlet boundary conditions has been of great interest since the 1960’s. We study reaction diffusion models where the reaction term is negative at the origin. In the literature, such problems are referred to as semipositone problems and have been studied for the last 30 years. In this dissertation, we extend the theory of semipositone problems to classes of singular semipositone problems where the reaction term has singularities at certain locations in the domain. In particular, we consider problems where the reaction term approaches negative infinity at these locations. We establish several existence results when the domain is a smooth bounded region or an exterior domain. Some uniqueness results are also obtained. Our existence results are achieved by the method of sub and super solutions, while our uniqueness results are proved by establishing a priori estimates and analyzing structural properties of the solution. We also extend many of our results to systems.

In this dissertation, we establish new existence, multiplicity, and uniqueness results on positive radial solutions for classes of steady state reaction diffusion equations on the exterior of a ball. In particular, for the first time in the literature, this thesis focuses on the study of solutions that satisfy a general class of nonlinear boundary conditions on the interior boundary while they approach zero at infinity (far away from the interior boundary). Such nonlinear boundary conditions occur naturally in various applications including models in the study of combustion theory. We restrict our analysis to reactions terms that grow slower than a linear function for large arguments. However, we allow all types of behavior of the reaction terms at the origin (cases when it is positive, zero, as well as negative). New results are also added to ecological systems with Dirichlet boundary conditions on the interior boundary (this is the case when the boundary is cold). We establish our existence and multiplicity results by the method of sub and super solutions and our uniqueness results via deriving a priori estimates for solutions.

In this dissertation we study positive solutions to a singular p-Laplacian elliptic boundary value problem on a bounded domain with smooth boundary when a positive parameter varies. Our main focus is the analysis of a challenging class of singular p-Laplacian problems. We establish the existence of a positive solution for all positive values of the parameter and the existence of at least two positive solutions for a certain explicit range of the parameter. In the Laplacian case, we also prove the uniqueness of the positive solution for large values of the parameter. We extend our existence and multiplicity results to classes of singular systems and to the case when a domain is an exterior domain. We prove our existence and multiplicity results by the method of sub and supersolutions and our uniqueness result by establishing apriori and boundary estimates. Such results are well known in the literature for the nonsingular case. In this study, we extend these results to the more difficult singular case.

In this thesis, I will discuss the conceptualization of existential loneliness in the early writings of the German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), especially his lecture “Einsamkeit” (1915/1916) and Philosophie (1932). I will try to elucidate the dynamics and processes involved in existential loneliness and its overcoming in existential communication. I will show that the shared objective world is the only medium for existential communication. The intersubjective encounter in the shared objective world is the occasion for the reciprocal taking/demanding responsibility, which will stimulate the inner dialectical movement of existential loneliness, i.e., between autonomy and authenticity. I will argue that existential loneliness is not something substantially negative or a disease that we must cure but a vital and creative process that makes us human. Blocking this process will have devastating consequences since it will impede the isolated person from being him/herself. Furthermore, I will discuss a few possible applications of the examined processes in human-robot interaction since the efficiency of the robots in helping humans overcome their existential loneliness will depend on their capacity to perform the processes discussed in this thesis.

The dissertation gives a rigorous study of surface waves on water of finite depth subjected to gravitational force. As for `water', it is an inviscid and incompressible fluid of constant density and the flow is irrotational. The fluid is bounded above by a free surface separating the fluid from the air above (assumed to be a vacuum) and below by a rigid flat bottom. Then, the governing equations for the motion of the fluid flow are called Euler equations. If the initial fluid flow is prescribed at time zero, i.e., mathematically the initial condition for the Euler equations is given, the long-time existence of a unique solution for the Euler equations is still an open problem, even if the initial condition is small (or initial flow is almost motionless). The dissertation tries to make some progress for proving the long-time existence and show that the time interval of the existence is exponentially long, called almost global well-posedness, if the initial condition is small and satisfies some conditions. The main ideas for the study are from the corresponding almost global well-posedness result for surface waves on water of infinite depth. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation concerns the mathematical study of surface waves on water of finite depth under gravitational force. Mathematically, water is considered as a fluid of constant density that has no viscosity and is incompressible. It is also assumed that any portion of the corresponding fluid flow is not rotating. Furthermore, the water is bounded above by a free surface separating the water from the air above and below by a rigid horizontal flat bottom. A natural question to ask is whether the water surface will keep smooth and will not break as time progresses, if a small disturbance on the flat free surface and the tranquil water-body is initially created. The dissertation tries to make some progress on this question by showing that under some mathematical and technical assumptions, the water surface remains smooth and will not break for a very long time by using the mathematical equations derived from the laws of physics.