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This treatise aims to investigate the components of good architecture. Good architecture is appropriate to its contexts, responds to its users, lets its users respond to it. Good architecture is beautiful. Good architecture is brought about by movement and in return it “moves” us. / Dissertation (MArch)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Architecture / unrestricted

The purpose -of this work is to discuss the symmetry, or lack of it, under reversal of motion in physical objects, states and processes. Considerations of such symmetry are made in both classical and quantum physics, notably in the problem of reconciling the assumed time-reversal symmetry of microscopic processes with the observed asymmetry of macroscopic processes. In the case of classical mechanics, a simple model of a free particle colliding with a series of almost stationary or stationary particles of smaller mass is introduced in order to show how a friction-like phenomenon can arise from processes all of which have symmetry under reversal of motion. It is maintained throughout that symmetry under reversal of motion is a property of all fundamental states and processes in nature. / Science, Faculty of / Physics and Astronomy, Department of / Graduate

Purpose: Assess for an association of wait times to melanoma treatment with overall survival. Methods: Retrospective review of Ontario patients with melanoma, with descriptive and survival analyses. Results: Median wait times were 43 days (interquartile range (IQR), 24-64) for wide local excision (WLE), 59 days (IQR, 41-81) for sentinel lymph node biopsy (SNB), 63 days (IQR, 43-91) for lymph node dissection (LND), 124 days (IQR, 96-150) for medical therapy, and 130 days (IQR, 89.5-157.5) for radiation therapy. In multivariate analysis, wait times to treatment were not associated with overall survival for WLE (hazard ratio (HR), 0.97; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.87-1.08; p=0.62), SNB (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.74-1.07; p=0.21), LND (HR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.89-1.11; p=0.92), medical therapy (HR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.80-1.10; p=0.41) or radiation therapy (HR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.61-1.03; p=0.08). Conclusion: Overall survival for patients with melanoma was not associated with wait times to surgical, medical or radiation therapy.

In this study, three major questions were investigated with respect to the amount of time i-n motion spent during four home college basketball games played by the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds. First, the amount of time in motion spent on offense was compared to the amount of time in motion spent on defense. Second, all the positions on offense and defense were compared to the amount of time spent in motion and thirdly, the differences of time spent in motion between the full court press and no press were calculated. The subjects used for this study were ten male athletes on the 1967-68 University of British Columbia Thunderbird Basketball team. Each team position was tested a total of seven times; twice to perfect the use of stop watches during exhibition games, once to run a percentage of error test on one forward position and four times to obtain scores utilized in this study. This sequence of testing was followed to give the testers time to become proficient in the use of the stop watches. The data was analyzed in order to obtain: a) the differences between offensive and defensive time spent in motion. b) the differences between each of the five positions regarding time spent in motion, offensively and defensively. c) the difference in time spent in motion between the full court press and no press, both offensively and defensively. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a valid statistical procedure for the estimation of the seasonal component of an economic time series when the seasonal component is suspected to be partly additive and partly multiplicative to the trend. The proposed procedure is based on a three-way classification analysis of variance model, where the first classification is used to represent the long term trend of the series, the second classification is used to represent any regular trend or cycle within the long term trend, and the third classification is used to represent the seasonal. The interaction term between the long term trend and the seasonal may be used to represent any long term change in the nature of the seasonal. However, as the standard analysis of variance significance tests assume independently distributed residuals, it is necessary to develop a test for independence of residuals against the very likely alternative of first order (positive) serial correlation. This is done by calculating the mean and variance of the Durbin-Watson d statistic for the three-way classification analysis of variance model. A numerical example is given to illustrate the procedure. / Science, Faculty of / Mathematics, Department of / Graduate

Two important problems namely a versatile, efficient communication system and allocation of processors to processes are analysed. An efficient communication system has been developed, in which a central controller, the bus-master, dynamically configures the point-to-point network formed by the links of the transputers. The links are used to form a point-to-point network. An identical kernel resides on each of the nodes. This kernel is responsible for all communications on behalf of the user processes. It makes ConnectLink and ReleaseLink requests to the central controller and when the connections are made it sends the the messages through the connected link to the destination node. If direct connection to the destination node cannot be made then the message is sent to an intermediate node, the message hops through intermediate nodes until it reaches the destination node. The communication system developed provides low latency communication facility, and the system can easily be expanded to include a large number of transputers without increasing interprocess communication overhead by great extent. Another problem, namely the Module Assignment Problem (MAP) is an important issue at the time of development of distributed systems. MAPs are computationally intractable, i.e. the computational requirement grows with power of the number of tasks to be assigned. The load of a distributed system depends on both module execution times, and intermodule communication cost (IMC). If assignment is not done with due consideration, a module assignment can cause computer saturation. Therefore a good assignment should balance the processing load among the processors and generate minimum inter-processor communication (IPC) ( communication between modules not residing on the same processor). Since meeting the deadline constraint is the most important performance measure for RTDPS, meeting the response time is the most important criteria for module assignment. Understanding this we have devised a scheme which assigns processes to processors such that both response time constraints and periodicity constraints are met. If such an assignment is not possible, assignment would fail and an error would be generated. Our assignment algorithm does not take into consideration factors such as load balancing. We believe that the most important factor for RTDPS is meeting the deadline constraints and that's what our algorithm accomplishes. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

This thesis considers an approach to evaluate the effectiveness of risk communications for prescription drugs by performing interrupted time series analysis of prescription drug volumes prior to and after the risk communication date. The paper presents methods for detecting change in the presence of autocorrelation and techniques to reduce bias in estimation. Statistical results and data plots are presented for 63 data series. Size and power of the statistical techniques are considered, and a correspondence analysis between these statistical techniques and a small group of physicians is performed. The methods considered in this thesis correspond weakly with physician sentiment, and exhibit inflated type I errors in the presence of significant autocorrelation.

This diploma thesis with the topic "The Producitvity - measurement and raising" involves the most important knowledge on the productivity. In the first part, author is describing theoretical concept of rasing, measurement productivity and its influence over ROI. The final part deals with practical implementation to a company struggling against its low performance. The target of this diploma thesis is to create a instruction for this company to increase the efficiency.

Cette thèse analyse le rôle que jouent les clients dans l’efficacité productive des entreprises de service. Après avoir présenté la conception de la valeur dans laquelle elle s’inscrit et défini ce qui caractérise la marchandise service, elle s’appuie sur une enquête de terrain menée auprès de clients et personnels de contact de la restauration rapide, de la grande distribution, des centres d’appels et du secteur paramédical, pour montrer qu’il existe quatre sortes de contribution des clients à l’efficacité productive des entreprises de service. La première est ce que l’on appelle l’astreinte client. Elle est le produit d’une certaine organisation du travail et contribue à réduire la porosité du temps de travail des personnels de contact. La seconde est la contribution managériale des clients. Elle renvoie au rôle que tiennent les clients dans l’encadrement et le rapport au travail des experts en front office. La troisième est l’intensification de leur contribution informationnelle. Elle se retrouve dans certaines situations de service, sous l’effet de la pression exercée par les personnels de contact et les autres clients. La quatrième, enfin, est l’augmentation de leur participation au procès de production. Concrètement, elle renvoie à toutes les situations de service dans lesquelles les clients prennent en charge de nouvelles tâches à la place des experts en front office. Ces différentes sortes de contribution des clients constituent les pièces d’un puzzle qui, une fois mises en discussion avec les théories de la valeur et de l’exploitation de K. Marx, donnent naissance à la théorie du néo-surtravail et aux concepts fondamentaux de la thèse : la néo plus-value extra et la néo plus-value relative. / This thesis analyzes the role played by customers in the productive efficiency of service firms. After introducing the concept of value of its framework and defining what characterizes a “marchandise service”, it relies on a survey conducted among customers and staff of different sectors (fast food, chain store retail, call centers and paramedical ones), to show that there are four sorts of customers’ contribution to the productive efficiency of service firms. The first one is the “astreinte client”. It is the consequence of a specific work organization, and it helps to reduce the porosity of the working time of the staff. The second one is the customers’ managerial contribution. It refers to the role played by customers in the management, and to the attitude to work of front office experts. The third one is the intensification of their informational contribution. It is found in certain service situations, as a result of pressure from staff and other customers. Finally, the fourth one is the increase of their participation in the production process. Basically, it refers to all service situations in which customers take on new tasks in place of front office experts. These different sorts of customers contribution are the pieces of a puzzle which, when discussed with the theories of value and exploitation of K. Marx, create the néo-surplus labour theory and the fundamental concepts of this thesis : the extra neo surplus value, and the relative neo surplus value.