Please read the abstract in the dissertation / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Chemistry / Unrestricted

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo estudar o trabalho social em processos de remanejamento da população moradora de favelas para Conjuntos Habitacionais de Interesse Social. Para tanto, foram estudados quatro empreendimentos promovidos pelas prefeituras de Osasco e São Paulo entre os anos de 2004-2014, nos quais o trabalho social ocupou posição central. O trabalho social em habitação social, área historicamente ligada ao serviço social, contou durante o período estudado, com aumento de recursos e maior institucionalização, na medida em que se tornou cada vez mais regrado por documentos governamentais. Essa maior consolidação tem sido simultânea à chegada de técnicos oriundos de outras áreas profissionais, entre as quais a arquitetura. Neste contexto observou-se uma reconfiguração da política de atendimento habitacional para os moradores da favela e um acréscimo na escassez de terrenos aptos a receber conjuntos habitacionais. Esse novo cenário demanda do trabalho social novos procedimentos de atuação em consonância com as novas políticas, o que tem provocado a exigência de novas especialidades que se valem de inúmeros e variados discursos. O trabalho busca entender o processo de saída da favela e entrada no conjunto habitacional, atentando para o quadro atual da produção da moradia de interesse social, percebendo como estes discursos são aceitos, rejeitados, incorporados, por técnicos e moradores, formando uma representação da vida comunitária. / This thesis aims to discuss social work on relocation processes of people living in \"favelas to housing estates. For such, we studied four housing projects promoted by the municipalities of Osasco and São Paulo between 2004 and 2014, in which social work played a key role. Social work and housing fields are historically linked: the former was met, during the timespan we targeted, rising public funding and bigger institutionalization, in that it also met with more regulation by official state documents. This bigger consolidation has been concurrent with the arrival of other professional areas, architecture among them. At this setting, we observed a \"favela\"-living people housing policy reconfiguration and a shortage rise of free lots able to receive housing projects. This new scenario demands new procedures from social work, in line with the new policies, something that has also demanded new expertises, built upon various different discourses. Our work, paying attention on current housing production scenario, tries to present an understanding of this favela-departure and estate-arrival process, apprehending how these discourses are accepted, rejected, incorporated, both by professionals and by dwellers, building a community life representation.

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo estudar o trabalho social em processos de remanejamento da população moradora de favelas para Conjuntos Habitacionais de Interesse Social. Para tanto, foram estudados quatro empreendimentos promovidos pelas prefeituras de Osasco e São Paulo entre os anos de 2004-2014, nos quais o trabalho social ocupou posição central. O trabalho social em habitação social, área historicamente ligada ao serviço social, contou durante o período estudado, com aumento de recursos e maior institucionalização, na medida em que se tornou cada vez mais regrado por documentos governamentais. Essa maior consolidação tem sido simultânea à chegada de técnicos oriundos de outras áreas profissionais, entre as quais a arquitetura. Neste contexto observou-se uma reconfiguração da política de atendimento habitacional para os moradores da favela e um acréscimo na escassez de terrenos aptos a receber conjuntos habitacionais. Esse novo cenário demanda do trabalho social novos procedimentos de atuação em consonância com as novas políticas, o que tem provocado a exigência de novas especialidades que se valem de inúmeros e variados discursos. O trabalho busca entender o processo de saída da favela e entrada no conjunto habitacional, atentando para o quadro atual da produção da moradia de interesse social, percebendo como estes discursos são aceitos, rejeitados, incorporados, por técnicos e moradores, formando uma representação da vida comunitária. / This thesis aims to discuss social work on relocation processes of people living in \"favelas to housing estates. For such, we studied four housing projects promoted by the municipalities of Osasco and São Paulo between 2004 and 2014, in which social work played a key role. Social work and housing fields are historically linked: the former was met, during the timespan we targeted, rising public funding and bigger institutionalization, in that it also met with more regulation by official state documents. This bigger consolidation has been concurrent with the arrival of other professional areas, architecture among them. At this setting, we observed a \"favela\"-living people housing policy reconfiguration and a shortage rise of free lots able to receive housing projects. This new scenario demands new procedures from social work, in line with the new policies, something that has also demanded new expertises, built upon various different discourses. Our work, paying attention on current housing production scenario, tries to present an understanding of this favela-departure and estate-arrival process, apprehending how these discourses are accepted, rejected, incorporated, both by professionals and by dwellers, building a community life representation.

Vi har i den här studien valt att undersöka problematiken mindre och medelstora företag upplever med en indirekt marknadskontakt. Med hjälp av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod och en flerfallstudie har vi intervjuat fyra företag och på så sätt granskat hur relationerna mellan företagen ser ut med syfte att undersöka företagens möjlighet att säkerställa sin identitet i en piggybackingprocess. Vidare har vi granskat möjligheten till att uppnå ett balanserat beroendeförhållande, förutsättningarna att skapa egna kundrelationer och stärka företagets varumärke, detta för att vidare kunna ge rekommendationer för framtida samarbetens utformande. I den teoretiska referensramen har vi huvudsakligen inriktat oss på etableringsstrategin indirekt export med inriktning på piggybacking. Vidare belyser vi internationaliseringsteorier, kundrelationer samt varumärken. Därefter har vi integrerat samtliga teorier i en teoretisk syntes som legat till grund för vår analys. Det empiriska kapitlet behandlar den information som tillhandahållits genom intervjuer med fallföretagen. I analyskapitlet diskuteras och analyseras den teoretiska referensramen tillsammans med det empiriska utfallet, vidare hålls en diskussion gällande problematiken kring indirekt export och dess utmaningar. Från vår analys framgår det att genom att vara medveten om de svårigheter som uppkommer med indirekt export, piggybacking, finns det möjlighet att reducera riskerna, dock ej utesluta. Vi har således konstaterat att en kundrelation och ett starkt varumärke kan bidra till att företaget kan säkerställa sin identitet. Med utgångspunkt i vår analys kan vi härmed dra slutsatsen att företag som arbetar aktivt med att klargöra sina mål med samarbetet. Genom att arbeta med att förbättra sina kundrelationer och försöka stärka sitt stärka varumärke kan detta bidra till ett ömsesidigt beroendeförhållande och på så vis stärka företagets identitet på en internationell marknad.

The transformation of the legacy electric grid to Smart Grid (SG) poses numerous challenges in the design and development of an efficient SG communications network. While there has been an increasing interest in identifying the SG communications network and possible SG applications, specific research challenges at the network protocol have not been elaborated yet. This dissertation revisited each layer of a TCP/IP protocol stack which basically was designed for a wired network and optimized their performance in IEEE 802.11s-based Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) communications network against the following challenges: security and privacy, AMI data explosion, periodic simultaneous data reporting scheduling, poor Transport Control Protocol (TCP) performance, Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) broadcast, and network interoperability. To address these challenges, layered and/or cross-layered protocol improvements were proposed for each layer of TCP/IP protocol stack. At the application layer, a tree-based periodic time schedule and a time division multiple access-based scheduling were proposed to reduce high contention when smart meters simultaneously send their reading. Homomorphic encryption performance was investigated to handle AMI data explosion while providing security and privacy. At the transport layer, a tree-based fixed Retransmission Timeout (RTO) setting and a path-error aware RTO that exploits rich information of IEEE 802.11s data-link layer path selection were proposed to address higher delay due to TCP mechanisms. At the network layer, ARP requests create broadcast storm problems in IEEE 802.11s due to the use of MAC addresses for routing. A secure piggybacking-based ARP was proposed to eliminate this issue. The tunneling mechanisms in the LTE network cause a downlink traffic problem to IEEE 802.11s. For the network interoperability, at the network layer of EPC network, a novel UE access list was proposed to address this issue. At the data-link layer, to handle QoS mismatch between IEEE 802.11s and LTE network, Dual Queues approach was proposed for the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access. The effectiveness of all proposed approaches was validated through extensive simulation experiments using a network simulator. The simulation results showed that the proposed approaches outperformed the traditional TCP/IP protocols in terms of end to end delay, packet delivery ratio, throughput, and collection time.

Over the recent decade the world has seen an increase in businesses launching new, or changing theirbusiness model to, digital platforms. New and established businesses are flocking to digital platformsin order to evolve their business model and keep up with advancements in technology, such as cloudcomputing, which enables commerce and communication on a much faster and more streamlinedlevel. Digital platforms with two-sided markets often face fierce competition from market incumbentswhich benefit from traditional supply-side economies of scale, as well as from other digital platforms.Therefore, the competitive strategy adopted at market launch and under operations will have a greatimpact on the platform performance in terms of firm financial performance.This study is divided into two parts and is performed with the objective to gain insight into thecompetitive strategies adopted by digital platform businesses with two-sided markets, and how suchstrategic decisions may be informed in favor of profitability. The first part investigates the influence ofinternal factors, such as debt ratio, quick ratio, sales growth, and capital turnover ratio, on the firmfinancial performance (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets inthe Nordics. The second part investigates the relationship between the firm financial performance(measured by return on assets) of digital platform businesses with two-sided markets after launch andthe type of strategy adopted. Subsequently, two hypotheses are presented. Subsequently, twohypotheses are presented. A panel data regression model is developed to evaluate these relationships,allowing the authors to test the null hypotheses. The data set used in the panel data regression modelcomprise an unbalanced sample of 27 companies who have launched their platforms in Norway,Sweden, and Denmark. Financial data was gathered in the form of return on assets (dependentvariable), capital turnover ratio, quick ratio, debt ratio, and sales growth (explanatory variables).These companies were grouped depending on which strategy was adopted on market launch and underearly operations. These strategies are subsidy, seeding and marquee users, micro market launch andpiggybacking (categorical ‘dummy’ variables).Studying the firm financial performance of businesses which adopt digital platforms will help us tobetter understand the efficacy of strategies adopted and how these strategies impact financialperformance. Both null hypotheses tested may be partially rejected. The authors conclude that theinternal factors debt ratio, quick ratio, and sales growth have a significant influence on theprofitability (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets in the Nordics.The influence of the internal factor capital turnover ratio on profitability is statistically insignificant.Quick ratio has a positive significant influence on profitability, whereas debt ratio and sales growthhave a negative influence. The authors also conclude that companies which have business modelsallowing them to adopt a subsidy strategy yields stronger profitability than those which adopt otherstrategies. Companies which entice seed & marquee users to their platform as a strategy yields thesecond strongest profitability. Companies which choose a micro market launch strategy yield theweakest profitability. The authors of this study will not draw conclusions on the efficacy of theadoption of a piggybacking strategy on profitability due to the limited number of observationsattributed to the piggybacking dataset.Future studies may expand upon this research with the inclusion of a wider catchment of businesses,as well as the inclusion of a wider data set to include other geographical locations and improvestatistical significance of the data set. An improvement to the study may also be to analyze thecorrelation between the strength of competitors upon market entry and the efficacy of the strategiesadopted.