The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between the concepts of incongruency, dogmatism, and social desirability. It was assumed that high scores of social desirability would be related to low incongruity scores while high dogmatism scores would be related to high incongruity scores. The relationship between social desirability scores and dogmatism scores was also investigated.

Ingrid Winterbach's novels especially the latest novels since Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat are characterised by an unconventional sense of humour. Although the comic aspects of her work are frequently referred to, no systematic research of the specific comic aspects of her work has been undertaken to date, despite humour being a striking part of her work. Almost everyone who conducts research on the comical reflects on the issue that any scientific study of humour usually negates the humour of the subject matter. The many divergent attempts to create a theory of humour in literature were split into three useful groups by Perks (2012). Some theories address incongruency, others degradation, and the third group of theories discusses the relief associated with the comical. This interpretation of the theories of humour is used in this study to discuss the humour in three of Winterbach's novels. Although it is possible to discuss many of the situations that arise in the novels in terms of incongruency, degradation, or relief (often by using all three theories), it is readily apparent that Winterbach's unique sense of humour is not sufficiently captured by using just these theories. To investigate the effect of humour in Winterbach's novels, the interpretation of humour, as suggested by Milan Kundera in Testaments betrayed (1993), is used, wherein the Czech writer describes humour as a specific species of the comic that renders ambiguous everything it touches. This ambiguity that is created by the comical plays a central part in Winterbach's work. / Ingrid Winterbach se romans veral die laaste romans sedert Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat word deur 'n aweregse humorsin gekenmerk. Hoewel daar dikwels na komiese aspekte van haar werk verwys word, is geen stelselmatige ondersoek van spesifiek die komiese aspekte van haar werk tot dusver onderneem nie, terwyl dit 'n besonder opvallende kenmerk van Winterbach se werk is. Byna almal wat oor die komiese navorsing doen, wys op die probleem wat daarmee ontstaan aangesien 'n wetenskaplike studie juis dikwels die komiese ondermyn. Die talle uiteenlopende pogings om die komiese in letterkunde te teoretiseer, word deur Perks (2012) op 'n nuttige wyse in drie groepe gedeel. Sommige teorieë fokus op onversoenbaarheid, ander op degradasie, en 'n derde groep teorieë is gemoeid met die ontlading wat die komiese sou bied. Hierdie verdeling van teorieë rakende die komiese word in hierdie studie benut om die komiese in drie Winterbach-romans te beskryf. Hoewel dit moontlik is om talle komiese situasies in die drie romans deur middel van onversoenbaarheidsteorieë, degradasieteorieë, en ontladingsteorieë te beskryf (dikwels kan dieselfde situasie trouens deur al drie teorieë beskryf word), blyk dit gou dat Winterbach se kenmerkende humor nie genoegsaam daardeur beskryf kan word nie. Om die effek van humor in Winterbach se romans te ondersoek, word aangesluit by Milan Kundera se beskouing van humor in Testaments betrayed (1993), waarin die Tsjeggiese skrywer humor beskryf as 'n spesifieke "spesie" van die komiese wat meerduidigheid veroorsaak. Hierdie meerduidigheid wat deur die komiese bewerkstellig word, speel 'n sentrale rol in Winterbach se werk. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Afrikaans / MA / Unrestricted

Salt hydrates have the potential to be used in heat storage as both phase-change materials (PCMs) and thermochemical materials (TCMs). These materials offer advantages over traditional heat storage methods due to their high energy densities. However, both domestic and industrial applications require thousands of thermal cycles and there are often many issues that need to be overcome before these materials can be used reliably for heat storage. One of the major issues with using salt hydrates as PCMs is incongruency - the formation of anhydrous phases during melting. In this research, the mechanisms of the action of polymers to prevent incongruency in sodium acetate trihydrate have been investigated. A new polymorph of anhydrous sodium acetate, Form IV, was obtained in the presence of the polymer. This polymorph crystallises as long, blade-shaped crystals, thereby increasing the surface area to volume ratio. Indexing of the crystal faces revealed that every face had Na+ or the oxygen atoms of the acetate ion near or on the surface, as opposed to hydrophobic methyl groups found on the faces of the anhydrous salt grown without polymer. These two factors are believed to significantly increase the dissolution kinetics. This technique has the potential to be used for screening polymers to reformulate other salt hydrates that display incongruent behaviour. Eutectic compositions of NaCl and KCl with strontium hydroxide octahydrate were investigated as a potential means to prevent the incongruency of this PCM. However, degradation was observed with thermal cycling. Variable temperature PXRD studies discovered a new Sr(OH)2 hydrate when heating above 75 °C - Sr(OH)2. ⅓H2O. The recrystallisation of the octahydrate from the new phase was slow with incomplete conversion, explaining the degradation with continuous cycling. The effect of addition of NaCl and KCl to congruent barium hydroxide octahydrate was also investigated. On heating, a phase transition was observed, but the samples remained solid. Variable temperature PXRD investigations discovered that this was due to the formation of the salt hydrate, Ba(OH)Cl.2H2O. This hydrate melted at 110 °C, showing its potential as a high temperature PCM. The dehydration pathways of magnesium sulfate heptahydrate were investigated. In-situ PXRD studies showed that changing the heating rate changed the intermediates present during the dehydration. The fast dehydration rate saw both the known phases of trihydrate and 2.5 hydrate form as the dehydration product of the tetrahydrate. These both then dehydrated to the known dihydrate. This differed when the slower heating rate was used, as the trihydrate was the only product of dehydration from the tetrahydrate. The trihydrate then proceeded to dehydrate to a new phase. This was found to be a new polymorph of the dihydrate, β-MgSO4.2H2O. Dehydration of MgSO4.7H2O with 50 mol% NaCl was also performed. Loeweite, Na12Mg7(SO4)13.15H2O, a dication sulfate hydrate, was formed as the major intermediate. This mixture showed advantages over the pure MgSO4.7H2O as dehydration to the monohydrate took less time and occurred at a lower temperature. There were also three fewer intermediate phases before dehydration to the monohydrate. Suspension and encapsulation materials were used in order to overcome the major issue of agglomeration with magnesium sulfate. Liquid water was ruled out as a viable hydration medium. Apparatus was developed to test humidity cycling, which allowed the effects of dehydration time and temperature to be investigated, as well testing a range of different formulations.

La phylogénie permet de reconstituer l'histoire évolutive de séquences ainsi que des espèces qui les portent. Les récents progrès des méthodes de séquençage ont permis une inflation du nombre de séquences disponibles et donc du nombre d'arbres de gènes qu'il est possible de construire. La question qui se pose est alors d'optimiser la recherche d'informations dans ces arbres. Cette recherche doit être à la fois exhaustive et efficace. Pour ce faire, mon travail de thèse a consisté en l'écriture puis en l'utilisation d'un ensemble de programmes capables de parcourir et d'annoter les arbres phylogénétiques. Cet ensemble de programmes porte le nom de TPMS (Tree Pattern Matching Suite). Le premier de ces programmes (tpms_query) permet d'effectuer l'interrogation de collections à l'aide d'un formalisme dédie. Les possibilités qu'il offre sont : La détection de transferts horizontaux : Si un arbre de gènes présente une espèce branchée dans un arbre au milieu d'un groupe monophylétique d'espèces avec lesquelles elle n'est pas apparentée, on peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'un transfert horizontal, si ces organismes sont des procaryotes ou des eucaryotes unicellulaires. La détection d'orthologie : Si une partie d'un arbre de gènes correspond exactement à l'arbre des espèces, on peut alors supposer que ces gènes sont un ensemble de gènes d'orthologues. La validation de phylogénies connues : Quand l'arbre des espèces donne lieu à des débats, il peut est possible d'interroger une large collection d'arbres de gènes pour voir combien de familles de gènes correspondent à chaque hypothèse. Un autre programme, tpms_computations, permet d'effectuer des opérations en parallèle sur tous les arbres, et propose notamment l'enracinement automatique des arbres via différents critères, ainsi que l'extraction de sous arbres d'orthologues (séquence unique par espèce). Il propose aussi une méthode de détection automatique d'incongruences. La thèse présente le contexte, les différents algorithmes à la base de ces programmes, ainsi que plusieurs utilisations qui en ont été faites / Phylogeny allows to reconstruct evolutionnary history of sequences and species that carry them. Recent progress in sequencing methods produced a growing number of available sequences, and so of number of gene trees that one can build. One of the consecutive issues is to optimise the extraction of information from the trees. Such an extraction should be complete and efficient. To address this, my thesis consisted in writing and then using a suite of programs which aim to browse and annotate phylogenic trees. This program suite is named TPMS (Tree Pattern Matching Suite). It browses and annotates trees with several algorithms. The first of them, tpms_query consists in querying collections using a dedicated formalism. This allows to: Detect horizontal transfers If, in a gene tree, a species is nested in a monophyletic group of unrelated species, one can infer this is a horizontal transfer, if this organisms are prokaryotic (also concerning some unicellular eukaryotes). Orthology detection: if a part of a gene tree exactly matches to the species tree, one can suppose these genes are set of orthologues. Validating known phylogenies: when controversy exists concerning the species tree, it is possible to query a lange collection of gene trees to perform a count of families matching to each hypothesis. Another program allows to perform parallel operations on all the trees, such as automating rooting of trees via different criterions. It also allows an automatic detection of incongruencies. The thesis introduces the context, different algorithms which the programs are based on, and several using performed with it

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