Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 248-262). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [151]-168). Also available on the Internet.

PhD thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis concerns stressed spline structures. A spline is defined as `an initially straight member with identical second moment of area about any axis perpendicular to its centroidal axis, bent into a spatial curve'. An analytical proof is presented to show that the spline's torsional stiffness is of no importance in its analysis (provided construction details do not introduce any torsional moment). This paramount proof allows the formulation of a spline analysis that relies solely on three translational degrees of freedom (3DOF) per node. Applying this 3DOF analysis to unstrained curves and battened or hoop supported membranes is approximate since the bending stiffness would correspond to one direction only. A series of four test cases validates the proposed 3DOF analysis. The analysis is first applied to a laterally loaded spline ring, where solution convergence and the effect of unequal length segment modelling are investigated. Most significantly, this test case demonstrates that the spline ring has a greater out-of-plane stiffness than a pre-bent ring. This feature lies at the basis of spline stressed membranes - the spline has superior out-of-plane stiffness under the action of forces applied by the membrane. The second and third test cases -- buckling of elastica and of a shallow sinusoidal arch -- clearly demonstrate that the 3DOF analysis is much faster, more accurate, and produces results closer to the analytical values compared with a 6DOF analysis. The fourth test case proves the efficiency of the 3DOF analysis through investigating buckling behaviour and loads of four circular arches under radial loading. As the torsional stiffness does not enter the 3DOF analysis, the stiffness of a spline constructed of spliced segments is identical to that of a continuous spline. In order to demonstrate their feasibility, five medium span (161n-32m) Glass Fibre Reinforced Plastic (GFRP) and one large span (57nt) steel tensegrity stressed spline membranes are designed, form-found and analysed under realistic loading conditions. These design studies show firstly that the spline and membrane stresses occurring under loading are within acceptable material limits and secondly that buckling occurs at values much higher than those encountered in reality. This thesis has demonstrated that engineered stressed spline structures, for which the development of a 3DOF was essential, have great design potential.

SA actor Tony Kgoroge admits to having struggled portraying Walter Sisulu as a young man

This dissertation addresses a central issue in the methodological debates that raged in the German academy around the turn of the twentieth century. The idea of "value-free" social science, or "value-freedom," was passed down to subsequent decades as a way of thinking about the objectivity of knowledge, but because of its name it has been widely misunderstood. Moreover, it has been seen either as a clever invention of the polymath scholar Max Weber, or as some form of ideology masquerading as neutrality (or both). Instead, a contextually sensitive historical analysis of the work of five German and Austrian scholars—Carl Menger, Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Jellinek, Hermann Kantorowicz, and Gustav Radbruch—demonstrates that value-freedom was a complex doctrine with widely ramified sources in the intellectual history of economics, sociology, and law. It was accepted on a variety of grounds and by individuals of differing personalities, politics, philosophical training, and academic disciplines. "Value-free" social science in the work of these men meant anything but the removal of values from scholarly consideration. Instead, its advocates promoted a focus on the subjectivity and the will of the individual, goal-directed agent. Value-freedom took the form of several interrelated distinctions, between theory and practice, fact and value, "is" and "ought," means and ends; but each of these scholars coupled his preferred formulation with the shared view that human values are incapable of rational justification. They insisted on the importance of the analytical separation of the positive and normative but recognized a legitimate role for the social sciences in the positive discussion of values. However, the attempt to bridge the subjective world of human values and the objective world of social scientific fact foundered for most of them on the inherently subjective choices made by the individual scholar, leading them to face the possibility that value-freedom could not provide a successful theory of objectivity without reformulation. The dissertation spans three decades and several disciplines, including the work of important jurists whose social scientific credentials have been neglected owing to their disciplinary backgrounds. / History

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Slavery is an unjust institution. Indeed, slavery is often seen to be a paradigmatic case of injustice. Despite this, there is little agreement on how to best explain the injustice of slavery. In this dissertation I examine and reject three main explanations of the injustice of slavery: that slavery is unjust because slaves lack freedom, that slavery is unjust because slaves are alienated from their social world, and that slavery is unjust because slaves lack self-respect. Such explanations are unable to explain the injustice of slavery itself because they cannot identify all cases of slavery as unjust. Instead, I argue that slavery is unjust because it makes it impossible for slaves to realise both their interest in self-respect and their interest in being at home in the world. Slavery is not the only institution, however, that places people in this dilemma; any institution that treats some people as inferior to others will be unjust for the same reason, although not necessarily to the same extent. Thus the explanation of the injustice of slavery also provides us with an explanation of the importance of political equality.