The problem was the relationship of responses of individuals with demonstrated differences in internal-external reward characteristics and directive, client-centered group counseling techniques.

Résumé Association Agreement with Ukraine This thesis is devoted to the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Being an innovative and comprehensive instrument of the EU external action this Association Agreement represents a relevant topic, which draws not only professional audience's attention. The thesis comprises of an introduction, three chapters and conclusion. The introduction of the thesis outlines its purpose and content, defines the main points of research the thesis is focused on, indicates the reasons of its relevance and explains the structure of the thesis. The first chapter of the thesis describes legal framework of the relevant changes in the area of the EU external action after the Treaty of Lisbon and examines possible legal basis of the Association Agreement with Ukraine in the scope of these changes. In this part there is a short description of the basic principles of the EU external action, the EU legal personality, new EU bodies for external action after the Treaty of Lisbon, EU power in external action. Later this thesis is devoted to Article 8 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) as a new possible legal basis in the EU external action, its relation to other legal bases and possible prospects of its application. After that Article 217 of the TEU is analyzed as a "classic" broad basis for...

In this thesis we provide evidence about the relative importance of foreign (Russian) and domestic monetary policy shocks for Belarusian economy. We employ a ten variable structural VAR model with block exogeneity and a set of dummy variables introduced to deal with instability of the data that corresponds to the periods of crises (2008 and 2011). We find that Belarus is significantly influenced by foreign shocks that account for 20 to 60 percent of fluctuations in domestic variables in the long run. The foreign demand and oil prices for Belarus are the main determinants of the domestic output and net export, while the foreign interest rate strongly affects Belarusian interest rate, money demand and the share of loans in GDP. Regarding the domestic monetary shocks, we find that the exchange rate is the most important channel in the Belarusian monetary transmission mechanism. We conclude that deeper trade integration with Russia could be beneficial for Belarusian economy, while in case of the monetary union creation the conduct of an independent monetary policy in Belarus could be further complicated.

Master of Music / Department of Music / David Littrell / An aspect of instrument choice that has not been studied in such abundance as the topics of timbre and gender associations of instruments are the influences of external factors, such as ensemble director, parent and family, friends, academic diversity, travel opportunities, and medical reasons as examples; however, these factors have been briefly addressed in word alone in many of the studies completed for related examinations. This study is integral in defining how music educators can better identify supplementary factors in addition to the timbre and gender association studies that will further influence students to choose to play an instrument and more specifically a string instrument. The findings can be applied to band, choir, theater, ROTC, and any other student organization as these factors are contributions and experiences from the student’s life previous to the presentation of the new activity. The current study focuses primarily on string instrument choice as gathered from a pilot survey using a string youth symphony ensemble from the Midwest as subjects and then high school students from three different but similar districts also in the Midwest. The information provided by the students was in agreement with previously performed studies; however, it also featured truths specifically unique to the ensemble and communities in which they were gathered. The researcher will seek to answer the following research questions: 1) What are the three most influential external factors that contributed to the student’s choice to begin string instruction? 2) How are these factors related to the musical culture of the student including opportunities for participation as well as observations? 3) Are family influences stronger than teacher/friend influences? 4) How does the strength of the string community (school and community) affect the beginning string student based on student perceptions of the two communities? Using descriptive statistics, the three most influential external factors contributing to the student’s string instrument choice in the pilot study were Parents, Private lesson teacher, and Other family. The three most influential external factors for the high school students were Parents, Live performance, and Friends. The three most influential external factors for High School #1 were Parents, Live performance, and Elementary Orchestra Teacher. For High School #2, the top three were Parents, High School Orchestra Teacher, and Friends. In High School #3, Parents, Live Performance, and Private Lesson Teacher were shown to be the student’s most influential external factors. In each case, Parents were reported as the most influential external factor for string instrument choice among the populations of students surveyed. When teachers determine recruitment activities, they must recruit the parent, which begins the moment the public school teacher is hired in the orchestra teaching position. Overall, parental influences trump all other external factors in the list examined by this population, which was slightly dissimilar than the review of the literature suggested.

D.Comm. / Foreign debt affects the economy through three main channels, namely: the debt overhang effect, the liquidity constraint effect and the uncertainty effect. The main aim of this study is to derive an optimal level of foreign debt relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for South Africa by investigating these channels. Incurring foreign debt is like a double edge sword. On the one side the foreign debt is needed for economic development (from a demand perspective) and on the other side the level of debt impacts on the economy through higher domestic interest rates, via the sovereign risk spread, (from a supply perspective). The factors that impact on capital flows as shown by previous periods of financial distress in the global capital markets and debt sustainability were investigated. This study shows that risk spreads are driven by both internal and external factors. Investors will price into the secondary risk spread their perceptions of the sustainability of foreign debt. This is also impacted by external factors such as contagion and the credit rating of a country. The different objectives of government in the internal capital market since 1994 and the secondary objectives of building liquidity benchmarks, diversifying the foreign currency portfolio, broadening the investor base in RSA bonds and borrowing at the most effective rates, are also discussed. A number of equations were estimated using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method and the values for government foreign debt were varied to test the impact on the familiar IS/LM/BP and AS/AD models. These models were further used to determine the debt overhang and liquidity constraint effect. It was found that foreign debt has an asymmetric impact on economic growth where it contributes to economic growth up to a level of approximately 35 per cent of GDP, where after it has a negative impact on economic growth.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the ERM II mechanism and to explain it's positives and negatives for the internal and external economic balance. In the first part of this thesis the author engages in the ERM II system and other applied exchange mechanisms. Further he focuses in detail on the theory of internal and external economic balance. In the analytic part of the work the author uses chosen indicators to monitor the influence of ERM II mechanism on the internal and external balance of three selected countries - Malta, Cyprus and Latvia. In the closing part the author summarizes the outcome of the analysis.

As mobile computers such as laptops and cellphones are becoming more and more powerful, the options for those who traditionally required a more powerful desktop PC, such as video editors or gamers seem to have grown slightly. One of these new options are external Graphics Processing Units (eGPUs). Where a laptop is used along with an external GPU, connected via Intel’s Thunderbolt 3. This is however a rather untested method. This paper discusses the performance of eGPUs in a variety of operating systems (OS’s). For this research, performance benchmarking was used to investigate the performance of GPU intensive tasks in various operating systems. It was possible to determine that the performance across operating systems does indeed differ greatly in some usecases, such as games. While other use cases such as computational and synthetictests perform very similarly independently of which system (OS) is used. It seems that the main limiting factor is the GPU itself. It also appears to be the case that the interface with which the GPU is connected to a computer does indeed impact performance, in a very similar way between different OS’s. Generally, games seem to loose more performance than synthetic and computational tasks when using an externalGPU rather than an internal one. It was also discovered that there are too many variables for any real conclusions to be drawn from the gathered results. This as theresults were sometimes very inconclusive and conflicting. So while the outcomes can be generalized, more research is needed before any definitive conclusions can be made.

ABSTRACT This research investigates the role played by external actors in contemporary African civil conflicts with specific attention to South Africa’s leading role in addressing Burundi’s intractable civil conflict. The inquiry was guided by looking at SA’s efforts in managing Burundi’s peace process in partnership with key external parties such as the Regional Initiative for peace in Burundi, AU and the UN; and by examining the level of success of SA’s involvement in the peace process and limitations encountered in pursuing diplomatic/political and military efforts aimed at resolving the civil conflict. The theories of conflict resolution and protracted social change, and scholarly and policy literature on intervention were drawn upon to frame the research. The struggle for political power explains the key root cause to Burundi’s civil conflict; rival politicians manipulated ethnicity and the past injustices, which are rooted in colonial policies of divide and rule, as tools in an attempt to accede to power and thereby, gain economic advantage at the expense of others. SA diplomatic efforts played an important role in addressing this by advocating for political and military power sharing. In order to reconcile and manage differences in approaches that were advocated to deal with the Burundi civil conflict, SA mobilized for support in Burundi’s neighbouring countries so as to back a peaceful solution to address the conflict. Further, in an effort to bolster its troops and, therefore, expand operations designed to promote peace in Burundi, SA had to merge into the African Mission in Burundi, and cooperate with the UN in order for the latter to render impetus to the peace process by, providing necessary resources and political support for the Burundi peace mission, and subsequently to assume the mission by taking over from the African mission. Although SA’s troop deployment provided protection for the former Hutu exile politicians and thereby, encouraged them to participate in negotiations and the transitional government, which participation increased chances of success in the peace process, however, SA did not do much in peacekeeping under the UN due to inadequate military equipments; civilians continued to be killed in the presence of SA troops, even though, under the UN their role extended to include civilian protection. To the extent that SA’s intensive diplomatic efforts resulted in the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, however, a number of Burundian parties did not participate in the signing of the agreement and the rebel movements were excluded from the process. Thus, the Arusha peace process failed to attain consensus in addressing Burundi’s contentious issues. Although the UN peacekeepers in Burundi, of which SA was part, had a Chapter VII mandate to enforce the peace of which civilian protection was part of their mission, they did not exercise it. Intervention was constrained by the Burundian government; they argued that the ultimate authority in maintaining security throughout the country rested on them. Moreover, it is difficult if not impossible to observe UN traditional peacekeeping norms while at the same time having to implement the responsibility to protect, which has been occasioned by the post-Cold War world, in which human rights have gained wider recognition, and international norms of sovereignty and nonintervention redefined. Thus, strict observance of the UN traditional peacekeeping norms, inhibit intervention aimed to protect civilians facing catastrophic circumstances or under imminent threat.

Student Number : 0311118P - MA research report - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Arts / Land reform in Southern Africa has attracted a lot of attention from sovereign third world government and those of developed countries. This followed the invasion of commercial farms in Zimbabwe and has a bearing on Zimbabwe’s neighbours especially Namibia and South Africa. This paper examines why governments at times adhere to land reform within the rule of law and at times does not, resulting in strained donor-government relations. A comparison of government-donor relations in Zimbabwe and Namibia is explored. The crux of the argument is that land reform is damaging when the rule of law is flouted by governments. Strained relations are a result of ineffective agencies of restraint, lack of commitment by the governments, external donors and white commercial farmers to correct land injustices that came into existence as a result of settler colonialism.

Student Number : 9900051W - MSc dissertation - School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / When specifying materials for use in exhaust systems, it is imperative that they exhibit sufficient corrosion resistance for the specific conditionsto which exhaust components are exposed, since up to 80% of all failures is attributed to corrosion and oxidation. It is therefore neccesary to establish the corrosion behaviour of the materials in conditions and environments to which the exhausts would typically come into contact with. Most car manufacturers, exhaust manufacturers and material providers have specific corrosion testing methods which they use to determine the corrosion resistance of candidate materials, but there appears to be no standard procedure. A summary comparing all the existing systems is given in section 2.7. The corrosion testing methods utilise a wide range of conditions, testing temperatures and stages. However, careful investigation of the tests show some similarities, and it was possible to identify eleven key tests, that cover internal corrosion, external corrosion and oxidation for both diesel and petrol engines. Eight of these tests were used to rank the corrosion and oxidation resistance of selected stainless steels, namely AISI type 304, 321, 409, 434 and DIN 1.4509. It appears that the austenitic stainless steels perform better in the cold end conditions, while the ferritic types are more resistant in the hot end high temperature conditions. Of all the eight test performed, only the electrochemical tests for external corrosion of cold end components did not give reproducible results. The rest of the tests could be used to screen materials for exhaust system applications. In the internal condition of the cold end, the results of the elctrochemical tests indicated that they can be used as a possible replacement for the long exposure tests. The key tests also highlighted the the presence of NH4+ ions in an exhaust gas is benificial to the corrosion resistance od stainless steels in internal cold end application. Its inhibiting effect was more pronounced for the ferritic stainless steels. The project indicated that external corrosion due to salt environments is not the major cause of the failure of cold end components, but rather that internal corrosion due to the condensate is the most detrimental.