In this paper, the mathematical theory of languages is used to investigate and develop computer systems for music analysis, composition, and performance. Four prominent research projects in the field are critically reviewed. An original grammar-type for the computer representation of music is introduced, and a computer system for music composition and performance based on that grammar is described. A user's manual for the system is provided as an appendix.

Through the lenses of critical pedagogy, cognitive psychology, marketing, curriculum development, traditional and informal education, and Black education, how one centre constructed and implemented critical edutainment is reviewed and scrutinized. The ethnographic study took place in a hyperreal (Baudrillard) setting using a bricolage of research methods: Seidman's 3-part interview protocol with workers and administrators; McMillan's focus group interview process with 9-12 year olds; participant-observation; field and reflective notes; and artefacts from external sources such as television broadcasts, newspapers, and official documents to gather and analyse data. In spite of its noble intentions, Gramsci's hegemony was witnessed and maintained through the centre's structure and organisation hence causing stress on the workers. Although the children and adults approved of the teaching and disciplinary acts, close regulation of their actions was done. Critical edutainment employs Vygotsky's zone of proximal development as it acknowledges the indigenous knowledges of adults and children and asks them to co-construct a curriculum that is cognitively, affectively, and socially relevant. It shows how curriculum construction, teamwork, accountability, and lessons learned from Black educators can be used to make a viable critical edutainment site that incites learning and fun.

The present debates over strategies to construct a non-racial democratic education system for South Africa concur that non-formal education is an indispensable complement of formal education. Formal education alone is not enough to develop the human resources of marginalized Third World people, whose capacity to participate and perform has been wasted over the centuries. Massive deficits in literacy, numeracy, vocational and technical skills among adults, school-leavers and school drop-outs, are clear problems to be tackled by non-formal education. In South Africa, non-formal education, as a component of education and training, is of recent origin. Research in the field is very limited. It is necessary to undertake scientific studies regarding key issues like adults' educational needs, programmes, available facilities and funds, and staffing needs required to maximize non-formal education's contributions to human resources development. This research aims to identify crucial issues in the provision of creative and viable non-formal education; to locate existing non-formal education resources and forms of network; to identify immediate and long-term non-formal education needs; and to develop a provision model for non-formal education. The study is set against the background of the development of non-formal education in selected European countries, some developing countries, and selected African countries. Non-formal education models are identified and described in Chapters Two and Three. This research focuses on the provision of non-formal education in the Pietermaritzburg region, in particular non-formal education providers, programmes or courses, trainers/teachers, trainees/learners, students' needs and the training of adult educators. Each of the above-mentioned areas is reviewed with the aim of making comparisons with the industrialized European countries in order to detect common and divergent trends which could have implications for the alleviation of the present situation in South Africa. It is also intended to develop a provision model for non-formal education in South Africa. The study samples comprised 400 learners/trainees, 200 teachers/trainers, and 100 managers, officials and principals of non-formal education institutions in the greater Pietermaritzburg region. The instruments used for data collection were two questionnaires and an interview schedule. Participant observation was also used. The study established the following major needs in non-formal education in the greater Pietermaritzburg region: strong links with a national system of adult education; efficient training system of adult educators; strong state commitment to the provision of non-formal education; proper networking amongst non-formal education providers; adequate INSET courses for non-formal education providers and teachers/trainers; a satisfactory system of funding non-formal education and more non-formal education centres in rural areas. The findings and conclusions led to the development of a provision model for non-formal education. The model has five major sequential components: (1) Establishing non-formal education needs through research, networking, and adult education organizers, etc.; (2) Constructing appropriate curricula/ syllabuses/courses and evaluating them during and after implementation; (3) Selection of non-formal education students based on relevant criteria; (4) Provision of appropriate training through suitably qualified trainers/educators and aided by a variety of support services; and (5) Placement of trained personnel in employment and monitoring their progress in the work situation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1996.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1987.

The Himalayan region of India has a surprisingly fragile ecosystem due in part to its geomorphic characteristics. In recent years the Himalayan ecosystem has been disturbed in various ways by both human and natural processes. Large developments threaten ecosystems in the area modifying local land use and subsistence patterns. This has important implications for the sustainable livelihoods of the local communities. People in these areas are very concerned about the lack of inclusion in development decision-making processes and the negative effects of development on their livelihood. Protest actions are spreading throughout Himachal Pradesh, not only to stop developments but also to re-shape how developments are taking place. The village of Jagatsukh was selected for in-depth study. That is where people started to organize around the Allain Duhangan Hydro Project and also where the protest actions in relation to the Hydro Project actually started. The overall purpose of this research was to understand the role of protests as a vehicle for public participation in relation to decisions about resources and the environment and to consider whether such movements are learning platforms for action on sustainability.

The notion of communication complexity was introduced by Yao in his seminal paper [Yao79]. In [BFS86], Babai Frankl and Simon developed a rich structure of communication complexity classes to understand the relationships between various models of communication complexity. This made it apparent that communication complexity was a self-contained mini-world within complexity theory. In this thesis, we study the place of regular languages within this mini-world. In particular, we are interested in the non-deterministic communication complexity of regular languages. / We show that a regular language has either O(1) or O(log n) non-deterministic complexity. We obtain several linear lower bound results which cover a wide range of regular languages having linear non-deterministic complexity. These lower bound results also imply a result in semigroup theory: we obtain sufficient conditions for not being in the positive variety Pol(Com). / To obtain our results, we use algebraic techniques. In the study of regular languages, the algebraic point of view pioneered by Eilenberg ([Eil74]) has led to many interesting results. Viewing a semigroup as a computational device that recognizes languages has proven to be prolific from both semigroup theory and formal languages perspectives. In this thesis, we provide further instances of such mutualism.

The study of formal power series is an area of interest that spans many areas of mathematics. We begin by looking at single-variable formal power series with coefficients from a field. By restricting to those series which are invertible with respect to formal composition we form a group. Our focus on this group focuses on the classification of elements having finite order. The notion of a semi-cyclic group comes up in this context, leading to several interesting results about torsion subgroups of the group. We then expand our focus to the composition of multivariate formal power series, looking at similar questions about classifying elements of finite order. We end by defining a natural automorphism on this group induced by a group action of the symmetric group.

Two for Flinching is a manuscript of forty-four poems broken into three sections. The first section is centered around family and nature, the second is centered around love and relationships, and the third section is mainly poems inspired by various mythologies.

No description available.

Recently, we have seen an increase in the deployment of safety critical embedded systems in rapidly changing environments, as well as requirement for on-site customizations and rapid adaptation. To address the extended range of requirements, adaptation mechanism are added to the systems to handle large number of situations appropriately. Although necessary, adaptations can cause inconsistent and unstable configurations that must be prevented for the embedded system to remain dependable and safe. Therefore, verifying the behavior of adaptive embedded systems during the design phase of the production process is highly desirable. A hard real time embedded system and its environment can be modeled using timed automata. Such model can describe the system at various levels of abstraction. In this thesis, we model the adaptive responses of a system in terms of tasks that are executed to handle changes in the environmental or internal parameters. Schedulability, a property that all tasks complete execution within their respective deadlines, is a key element in designing hard real-time embedded systems. A system that is unschedulable immediately compromises safety and hard real-time requirements and can cause fatal failure. Given specifications of all tasks in the system, we can model the system, an abstraction of the environment, and adaptive strategies to investigate whether the system retains safety properties, including schedulability, regardless of the changes in the environment and adaptations to those changes.