Many unemployed construction workers, some with years of trade experience, often travel vast distances to the city and congregate daily at certain places in the city, hoping to earn a day’s wages and. Some have to sleep on the street and in parks, only to wait, hope and believe that the following day an employment opportunity will arise. The study adresses unemployment and the physical, metaphysical and socio-economic boundaries which exists around building supply stores. This dissertation aims at uplifting the unemployed who do not have formal qualifications and are willing to work with acquired trades on site. The prospective workers claim to be skilled in trades such as painting, brick laying, plumbing and plastering. The study investigates how architecture can diffuse the boundaries between the possible employees and the unskilled workers by advertising how skills are being taught and transferred to the workforce Using the Builders Warehouse franchise chain, three different training centre typologies are proposed in the parking areas of the stores based on size, number of unemployed gathering in the area and available parking bays. The programme focuses on providing proper training based on the training programme of the Atteridgeville Campus of the Tshwane Technical College where the workers can obtain a skill with an associated qualification as determined by CETA (Construction Education Training Authority). Training provided will also focus on new technologies and materials as well as energy efficient building materials. Ultimately the Training Centre should become a threshhold, to foster mutually beneficial relationships to be formed between the building supply store, clients and unskilled or unemployed workers gathering around the store. The investigation of the problem of unemployed construction workers initiated the development of a architectural typology, termed “trade architecture”. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

The world is growing more and more genetically modified (or engineered) crops (GM crops). In Argentina farmers grow almost only GM soy, and no conventional soy. It is a controversial subject, since genetic engineering has many advocates and critics. The positive sides of GM crops are that it can create higher yields and incomes for the farmers. Those are the main objects of growing GM crops. Critics, on the other hand, say that GM crops have bad effects on the environment, and the risks could be too high. For example GM crops can spread to neighboring farms, where organic crops are growing. Many scientists claim that nobody really have enough knowledge of the effects of growing GM crops, and therefore thorough risk assessments are needed to examine the effects and possible risks of growing GM crops before starting to grow them. Politicians, too often, make decisions on false scientific grounds, when they claim that genetic engineering is a safe and precise method. The large corporations developing GMOs are heavily influencing political decision making. Scientists have studied the genetic engineering process and the results show that the method is not precise. It is difficult to know exactly what gene is transferred, and where it ends up. It is also important to discuss the precautionary principle in the decision making process.

ŠEVČÍK, M. Environmental-economic aspects of cultivation of selected genetically modified plants in European Union. Diploma thesis. Mendel University in Brno. Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies, 2017. This diploma thesis deals with the topic of cultivation of selected genetically modified crops in the EU. Literature part describes population development and food production in Europe after the Industrial Revolution, while the other parts are focused on the mechanism of genetic modification of crops, the potential impacts of their cultivation, as well as the perception of this issue in the public and interest groups followed by description of the past and current state of GM crop cultivation in the EU, with particular emphasis on the legislative and institutional framework of the issue. The literature part is concluded by comparison of the environmental and economic impacts of growing MON810 maize on the territory of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, and a subchapter on the potential benefits of growing Roundup Ready Soy in the EU. The practical part of the thesis presents the results of a one-year soybean experiment with the aim of finding the optimum types and dose of fertilizers for the highest yield and nutritional value of the seed. On the basis of these results, the author of the thesis then estimates the potential of introducing genetically modified soybean - Roundup Ready variety, in EU.

Row crop production can be characterized by constant change. Agricultural technology is responsible for most of the changes in productivity observed at the field level since the advent of mechanized farm equipment. Genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties have changed many aspects of cotton production in the United States. The advent of GM varieties has been the source of altered cropping practices in cotton production. The rapid adoption of GM cotton varieties in Mississippi has allowed producers to alter certain aspects of their farming operation because of added flexibility, increased yields, and other benefits of GM varieties. This study analyses the effects of certain changes in some of the most relevant components of cotton production on yield that stem from the adoption of GM varieties in Mississippi by estimating and comparing regional production functions from 1996 to 2005.

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Classical adaptive signal processors typically utilize assumptions in their derivation. The presence of adequate Gaussian and independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) input data are central among such assumptions. However, classical processors have a tendency to suffer a degradation in performance when assumptions like these are violated. Worse yet, such degradation is not guaranteed to be proportional to the level of deviation from the assumptions. This dissertation proposes new signal processing algorithms based on aspects of modern robustness theory, including methods to enable adaptivity of presently non-adaptive robust approaches. The contributions presented are the result of research performed jointly in two disciplines, namely robustness theory and adaptive signal processing. This joint consideration of robustness and adaptivity enables improved performance in assumption-violating scenarios—scenarios in which classical adaptive signal processors fail. Three contributions are central to this dissertation. First, a new adaptive diagnostic tool for high-dimension data is developed and shown robust in problematic contamination. Second, a robust data-pre-whitening method is presented based on the new diagnostic tool. Finally, a new suppression-based robust estimator is developed for use with complex-valued adaptive signal processing data. To exercise the proposals and compare their performance to state- of-the art methods, data sets commonly used in statistics as well as Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) radar data, both real and simulated, are processed, and performance is subsequently computed and displayed. The new algorithms are shown to outperform their state-of-the-art counterparts from both a signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) convergence rate and target detection perspective. / Ph. D.