Scour is a phenomenon of soil erosion around foundations under currents and waves. It is a major cause for the disruption to water-borne structures such as bridges and marine structures. Pile foundations supporting these structures are required to be designed against the scour damage. However, at present, there is no accepted method for the design of piles in scoured conditions probably due to an inadequate understanding of scour effects on foundations. Although numerous efforts have been made to evaluate the scour effects on single piles using numerical simulations and centrifuges tests, the scour susceptibility of piles in different soil properties is still not well understood. Furthermore, there is no study concerning scour effects on the lateral responses of pile groups. Therefore, a series of three-dimensional finite element (FE) parametric analyses were conducted to investigate scour effects on lateral behavior of both single piles and free-head pile groups by varying scour-hole dimensions, soil properties, pile properties, and pile group configurations. Moreover, to facilitate the routine design, a modified p-y method that was modified based on the widely used p-y method was proposed for both scoured single piles and pile groups, and was validated against the results from the FE analyses. The results show that scour induced lateral capacity loss to both single piles and pile groups, which was approximately 10% more in dense sands than that in loose sands. Simplification of local scour as a general scour that has been commonly used in general design practice resulted in a maximum of 17% underestimate of lateral capacity of pile foundations. Pile groups were more susceptible to scour than single piles under equivalent scour conditions. A pile group with smaller pile spacing or larger pile numbers tended to experience less lateral capacity loss due to scour. / Graduate / 2020-08-19

This study explored how the use of real-life contexts influences South African Grade 8 learners’ responses in solving mathematical word problems. A mathematical task was given to investigate whether the influence exists and if so how. The study falls within a social constructivist framework which emphasizes construction of learners’ own knowledge in the learning process. Learners do so when they are able to recognize and interpret a mathematical task as one for which everyday knowledge as well as mathematical knowledge would be a relevant resource on which to draw. The research method employed was a case study. Data for the study was collected through written a mathematical task and individual learner interviews. In the report key issues are identified and discussed. They are concerned with (a) learners representation of a number and (b) learners’ mathematical and real-world knowledge. The study concludes that current use of word problems does not foster in learners realistic considerations even though the South African curriculum emphasizes the incorporation of everyday life experiences into mathematics. Rather than providing realistic contexts that encourage learners to use commonsense knowledge and experience in the problem-solving process, school word problems are perceived as artificial, undoubtedly solvable, but also that everything in the problem text is confined to relevance and no-ambiguity. The report concludes with recommendations for classroom practice, teacher education and further research.

Student Number : 0414810F - MA research report - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / The goal of this research report was to profile the coping strategies of households in Thorndale to the effects and impacts of the 2002/2003 drought. Thorndale, the study site is prone to drought and thus experiences severe drought almost every year. The rationale behind the selection of Thorndale for the study was based on this fact, in addition to the fact that the study area is relatively unstudied. The study’s major findings included inadequate agricultural extension service delivery in the community, while the drought’s impacts were economic, social, nutritional and health, food shortage, environmental and wildlife. The most significant and largest impact was water shortage. These impacts led to increased household dependency on the natural capital component of livelihoods in addition to prostitution and the community’s institutional arrangements. The main constraints households encountered in response to the drought’s impacts included the lack of employment opportunities, financial and infrastructural problems among others. It is recommended that with respect to food security, efforts should be made to ensure the trickle down effect of national level assessment of vulnerability on annual basis to rural households in South Africa’s drought-prone areas including Thorndale, in order to improve timely and practical solutions to issues of food insecurity. Furthermore, it should be ensured that the national level benefits of early warning systems trickle down to the local and community levels including Thorndale. Additionally, agricultural extension service delivery in the community needs to be improved.

Estudos prévios têm mostrado que a resposta postural automática pode ser influenciada por processamentos corticais associados com aprendizagem, experiência prévia e dica prévia. No entanto, pouco se sabe sobre como as respostas posturais de idosos são moduladas através de diferentes informações contextuais. O presente estudo objetivou investigar como a combinação de diferentes informações de contexto, dadas por experiência com tentativas prévias e dicas sobre aspectos temporais e espaciais de uma perturbação iminente, modulam respostas reativas em indivíduos idosos em comparação a adultos jovens. A tarefa consistiu em manter a postura ereta em resposta à rotação da base de suporte nos sentidos de dorsi ou plantiflexão do tornozelo, com amplitude e velocidade fixas. No Experimento 1 adultos jovens e idosos foram submetidos a quatro condições experimentais, resultantes da combinação de dica por indicação visual do sentido de rotação e de sequência de rotações, as quais eram feitas de forma aleatória ou repetitiva. No Experimento 2 foram oferecidas dicas sobre direção e/ou tempo de rotação da plataforma. Os resultados indicaram séries de tentativas com mesma direção de rotação induziram menor oscilação do centro de pressão e menor ativação muscular, enquanto que séries aleatórias induziram menor latência de ativação muscular. Dica temporal induziu latências mais curtas de ativação muscular, e dica sobre direção de perturbação induziu respostas musculares de menor magnitude (efeito observado apenas no Experimento 1). Não foi observado efeito diferencial de dicas entre os grupos etários. Os resultados sugerem que informações contextuais modulam respostas posturais reativas, e que o controle postural em indivíduos idosos é beneficiado por informações contextuais de forma similar a adultos jovens / Previous studies have shown that automatic postural responses can be influenced by cortical processing associated with learning, prior experience, and precue. However, scarce behavioral evidence has been provided about how postural responses are modulated by different contextual information in the elderly. The present investigation aimed at evaluating how different contextual information through prior experience and precueing about direction and/or time of basis of support rotation modulate reactive postural responses of elderly. The task consisted of recovering stable upright body balance in response to rotation of the support basis, inducing dorsi or plantar flexion with fixed amplitude and velocity. In Experiment 1 young and elderly people performed four experimental conditions resulting from combination of visual precue about direction of rotation and prior experience through repetitive or random sequences of trials. In Experiment 2 participants were provided with precueing about direction and/or time of platform rotation. Results showed that series of trials with the same direction of rotation induced decreased center of pressure oscillation and muscular activation, whereas random series induced shorter latencies of muscular activation. Precueing about time of platform rotation induced shorter latencies of muscular activation, and precueing about direction of rotation induced decreased muscular activation (effect observed in Experiment 1 only). No differential effect of precueing was observed between age groups. Results suggest that contextual information modulates reactive postural responses, and that elderlys reactive postural responses are benefited by contextual cues in a similar way as young adults responses

Nesta dissertação, o objetivo é investigar um conjunto de redações do Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (Enem)/2012, analisando as relações dialógicas estabelecidas pelos escreventes a partir da interação ativa com as vozes reportadas para a defesa de um ponto de vista sobre o tema: O movimento imigratório para o Brasil no século XXI. Desde 2009, o Enem seleciona candidatos para o ingresso no ensino superior e a redação é o instrumento que solicita a elaboração de um texto dissertativo-argumentativo. A partir do total de 2720 redações cedidas pelo Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep), o corpus foi constituído por 121 redações, segundo dois critérios: (a) a faixa de desempenho de 200 a 1000 pontos, respeitando a diversidade de notas, e (b) as cinco regiões brasileiras, marcando a representatividade regional. A fundamentação teórica deste trabalho centra-se na perspectiva dialógica da linguagem de Bakhtin e o Círculo, principalmente, nos conceitos de enunciado concreto e discurso citado, e na perspectiva ideológica dos estudos de letramento. Assumindo o trabalho com a escrita como um processo de compreensão responsiva, esta pesquisa buscou compreender cada texto como uma réplica ativa à proposta de redação e aos discursos oficiais que dela ecoam. No conjunto das redações, foram identificados quatro tipos de réplicas, que serviram como eixos norteadores para a análise dos modos heterogêneos de como os escreventes responderam às instruções objetivas da proposta e ao tema da imigração: (i) réplicas à exigência dissertativa; (ii) réplicas aos textos da coletânea, (iii) réplicas à imagem da identidade nacional e (iv) réplicas à história oficial do Brasil. Dentro de cada uma dessas réplicas, os resultados mostraram que os escreventes utilizaram procedimentos linguístico-discursivos para a construção do texto argumentativo, tais como: citações nos diferentes estágios composicionais da dissertação, paráfrases associadas à síntese, cópia e imitação dos textos da coletânea, construções referenciais para a caracterização do Brasil, como o uso de slogans, a mobilização de alusões históricas e narrativas da colonização. Tais procedimentos foram usados para assumir posicionamentos polêmicos e não polêmicos, alguns empregados com tendência à reprodução da palavra alheia e outros com vistas a sua reelaboração. Sob um olhar dialógico-axiológico, a análise da apreensão dos discursos de dentro e de fora da coletânea constatou não só o engendramento ativo dos sujeitos na produção de sentidos, mas os seus direcionamentos para os interlocutores presumidos e para as vozes institucionais dentro da rede de relações que envolve o projeto de escrita na avaliação do Enem. As réplicas puderam mostrar percursos discursivos construídos no diálogo com diferentes repertórios sociais, culturais e linguísticos, sinalizando que o trabalho com a escrita não está desvinculado dos contextos sócio-históricos das práticas letradas dos escreventes, refletindo e refratando os modelos normativos. / In this dissertation, the goal is to investigate a collection of essays from the National Secondary Brazilian Examination (Enem)/2012, analyzing the dialogic relations established by the writers from the active interaction with the reported voices to defend a point of view on the topic \"the immigration movement to Brazil in the 21st century\". Since 2009, Enem selects candidates for admission to higher education and the writing is the instrument that calls for the development of a dissertative-argumentative text. From the total of 2720 essays provided by the National Institute for Educational Studies Anísio Teixeira (INEP), the corpus was consisted of 121 essays, according to two criteria of selection: a) the performance range of 200-1000 points, respecting the diversity of scores, and b) the five Brazilian regions, marking the regional representation. The theoretical foundation of this work focuses on the dialogic language perspective of Bakhtin and the Circle, mainly, the concepts of \"utterance\" and \"quoted speech,\" and the ideological perspective of the literacy studies. Assuming the job with writing as a process of responsive understanding, this research sought to understand each text as an active response to the writing proposal and to the official discourses. In all the texts, four types of responses were identified, which served as a guide for the analysis of the heterogeneous modes of how the participants answered to the instructions of the proposal and to the issue of immigration: (i) responses to the dissertation requirement; (ii) responses to the texts of the collection, (iii) responses to the image of national identity and (iv) responses to the official history of Brazil. Within each of these responses, the results showed that the subjects used linguistic-discursive procedures for the construction of the argumentative text, such as: quotes in different compositional stages of the dissertation, paraphrases associated with synthesis, copy and imitation of the texts from the collection, characterization of Brazil as the use of slogans, the mobilization of historical allusions and narrative of colonization. These procedures were used to take controversial positions and not controversial ones, some employed with the tendency to reproduce the alien word and others with the tendency to remake them. Under a dialogical axiological perspective, the analysis of the comprehension of the inside and outside discourses of the collection found not only the active gendering of the subjects in the production of meanings, but their directions for the presumed actors and to the institutional voices within the network relationships of the writing project on the assessment of Enem. The responses could show discursive routes constructed in dialogue with different social, cultural and linguistic repertoires, signaling that the work with writing is not disconnected from the socio historical contexts of the student´s literate practices, reflecting and refracting the normative models.

Yes / Background: Our motor actions normally generate sensory events, but how do we know which events were self generated and which have external causes? Here we use temporal adaptation to investigate the processing stage and generality of our sensorimotor timing estimates. Methodology/Principal Findings: Adaptation to artificially-induced delays between action and event can produce a startling percept¿upon removal of the delay it feels as if the sensory event precedes its causative action. This temporal recalibration of action and event occurs in a quantitatively similar manner across the sensory modalities. Critically, it is robust to the replacement of one sense during the adaptation phase with another sense during the test judgment. Conclusions/Significance: Our findings suggest a high-level, supramodal recalibration mechanism. The effects are well described by a simple model which attempts to preserve the expected synchrony between action and event, but only when causality indicates it is reasonable to do so. We further demonstrate that this model successfully characterises related adaptation data from outside the sensorimotor domain.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T14:20:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Roberta Castro Campos Borba.pdf: 874247 bytes, checksum: 09e05e32ba31c3299241dd914b666925 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-12 / The present study analyzed the verbal responses of two people with a psychiatric diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Participants were one female aged 18, and one male, 35 years of age. For analysis of antecedent and consequent events that controlled the verbal responses indicative of mood swings, was applied the strategies of indirect functional assessment, and direct and experimental, with the use of multiple conditions with four main conditions: attention condition, demand, alone, and control. The attention condition was subdivided into three sub conditions: medicine-condition, family- attention and cellular care-attention for P1; and exclamation attention, sign attention of approval and doubt attention for P2. An intervention program was accomplished through the design of alternate treatments of type ABCA followed by follow-up. The first purpose was to use functional assessment methodology to verify the controlling variables that produced and maintained the verbal responses of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Other was to reduce problem behaviors, while new desired behaviors were installed. The results suggest that social attention controlled about the verbal responses from both participants, whose frequencies decreased throughout the treatment program. These findings were discussed in terms of the importance of using functional assessment process for classes of problem behaviors in people with diagnoses of bipolar disorder. / O presente trabalho analisou as respostas verbais de duas pessoas com diagnóstico psiquiátrico de transtorno bipolar. Os participantes foram um do sexo feminino, com 18 anos e masculino, com 35 anos de idade. Para análise dos eventos antecedentes e consequentes que controlavam as respostas verbais indicativas de oscilação de humor, aplicaram-se as estratégias de avaliação funcional indireta, direta e experimental com o uso do delineamento de múltiplas condições com quatro condições principais: condição de atenção, demanda, sozinho e controle. A condição de atenção foi subdividida em três subcondições: atenção-medicamentos, atenção-familiares e atenção-celular para P1; e atenção-exclamação, atenção- sinal de aprovação e atenção- dúvida para P2. Um programa de intervenção foi realizado por meio do delineamento de tratamentos alternados do tipo ABCA seguido de follow-up. O primeiro objetivo foi utilizar a metodologia de avaliação funcional para verificar as variáveis controladoras que produziram e mantiveram as respostas verbais de pessoas com diagnóstico de transtorno bipolar. Outro foi reduzir os comportamentos-problema, enquanto novos comportamentos desejados fossem instalados. Os resultados sugerem que a atenção social exerceu controle sobre as respostas verbais de ambos as participantes, cujas frequências diminuíram ao longo do programa de tratamento. Esses achados foram discutidos em termos da importância do uso do processo de avaliação funcional para identificar classes de comportamentos-problema de pessoas com diagnósticos de transtorno bipolar e propor intervenção.

This dissertation examines how certain epidemic outbreaks become "global threats", that is, diseases that become the focus of international regulations and organized responses while others do not. To answer this question, this dissertation draws upon archival data collected at the World Health Organization (WHO) archives in Geneva, the Western Cape Archives in Cape Town, the British Library, British National Archives, the Wellcome Library Archives in London, and twelve qualitative interviews with senior global health actors in order to analyze five cases when disease threats were prioritized internationally as well as how these constructions patterned responses to outbreaks. I begin by exploring the formation of the first international disease controls in the 19th century, the International Sanitary Conventions, created to prevent the spread of three diseases- plague, cholera and yellow fever. I probe how these earliest conventions patterned responses to diseases covered under them and limited responses to those beyond their scope. Examining how these conventions transformed, I explore why the same disease priorities were maintained by the WHO in their International Sanitary Regulations of the 1950's. Finally, I analyze the transformation of the International Health Regulations in 2005 and its effects on the assessment of disease threat. This dissertation shows that three factors structure the construction of disease threat: epidemic orientalism, economic concerns and field dynamics. Epidemic Orientalism, a discourse motivating the construction of disease threat that first emerged in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, positioned the colonized world as the space from which Europe and the Imperial powers needed to be protected. This orientalist gaze prioritizes the control of diseases emanating from colonial sites that threaten international trade and commerce and has been re-inscribed in all past and present regulations. These factors explain how and why plague, cholera and yellow fever came to be maintained as the primary diseases of international concern until the 21st century. As the WHO has recently been challenged in its authority to manage disease threats, these two factors are also mediated by the WHO's manipulation of symbolic power within a new field of infectious disease management which conditions responses to outbreaks today.

O presente trabalho teve, como objetivos, a) desenvolver um procedimento para estabelecer, em abelhas Melipona quadrifasciata anthidioides, a resposta de escolha de acordo com o modelo, com base em dados da literatura; b) testar o procedimento elaborado; c) aperfeiçoar ou modificar esse procedimento, com base nos dados obtidos. Como o procedimento, inicialmente proposto para ser testado, tivesse se mostrado ineficaz para instalar a resposta desejada, várias modificações foram efetuadas com base nos dados que estavam sendo produzidos, até chegar à elaboração de um procedimento eficaz para instalar, nos sujeitos, a resposta de escolha de acordo com o modelo, utilizando estímulos de duas cores diferentes. Esse procedimento iniciava-se com a apresentação de apenas dois cartões de tamanhos diferentes, sendo que o maior (SD ) englobava os estímulos modelo e de comparação de mesma cor. Através de fading da dimensão tamanho, o modelo era gradualmente separado do estímulo de comparação de mesma cor, ate que os três estímulos ficassem igualmente espaçados e distribuídos em três cartões de igual tamanho. Os resultados obtidos com esse procedimento mostraram um ,aumento gradativo na porcentagem de RD, até estabilizar na porcentagem máxima; cada aumento na distância entre os estímulos era seguido de uma diminuição, pequena e de curta duração, na porcentagem de RD Esses resultados, e os obtidos com outros procedimentos utilizados, foram discutidos em ter mos dos efeitos das modificações efetuadas na situação experimental sobre o desempenho dos sujeitos. / The present work has, as main goal, the development of a procedure to stablish matching-to-sample response in bees (Melipona quadrifasciata anthidioides ). Based on an analysis of the literature, a procedure was chosed. The data of the testing of such a procedure, showed the need to introduce several modifications, until gradual improvement of the final procedure was achieved. The dimension along which the work was developed was wavelength. On the final procedure, two post cards of different sizes were used, the e larger one contained both the standard and one of the comparison stimuli, the smaller card contained the remaining comparison stimulus, and initially this was always the one not-to-be-chosen. Gradually, standard and comparison stimuli present in the same card were separated, by fading the size dimension, until all three stimuli were evenly spaced and distributed on three equal size cards. Under this procedure, correct responses showed a gradual increase reaching the maximum percentage of correct responses. Each increase in the space between the standard and the to-be-chosen comparison stimulus was followed by an small and short living decrease in the percentage of correct responses. Different features of this, and other discarded procedures were analyzed in connection to the subjects performance.

Embodied Music Cognition is a recently developed theoretical and empirical framework which in the last eight years has been redefining the role of the body in music perception. However, to date there have been very few attempts to research embodied musical experiences in early childhood. The research reported in this thesis investigated 4- and 5-year-olds’ self-regulatory sensorimotor processes in response to music. Two video-based observation studies were conducted. The first, exploratory in nature, aimed to identify levels of musical self-regulation in children’s actions while ‘playing’ in a motion-based interactive environment (Sound=Space). The interactive element of this system provided an experiential platform for the young ‘players’ to explore and develop the ability to recognise themselves as controlling musical events, and to continuously adapt their behaviour according to expected auditory outcomes. Results showed that low-level experiences of musical self-regulation were associated with more random trajectories in space, often performed at a faster pace (e.g. running), while a higher degree of control corresponded to more organised spatial pathways usually involving slower actions and repetition. The second study focused on sensorimotor synchronisation. It aimed to identify children’s free and individual movement choices in response to rhythmic music with a salient and steady beat presented at different tempi. It also intended to find the similarities and differences between participants’ repertoire and their adjustments to tempo changes. The most prominent findings indicate that children’s movements exhibited a resilient periodicity which was not synchronised to the beat. Even though a great variety of body actions (mostly non-gestural) was found across the group, each child tended to use a more restricted repertoire and one specific dominant action that would be executed throughout the different tempi. Common features were also found in children’s performance, such as, the spatial preference for up/down directions and for movements done in place (e.g. vertical jump). The results of both studies highlight the great deal of variability in the way preschoolers regulate their own sensorimotor behaviour when interacting with music. This variety of responses can be interpreted as underlining the importance of the physical nature of the cognitive agent in the perception of music. If this is indeed the case, then it will be crucial to create and develop embodied music learning activities in early years education that encourage each child to self-monitor their own sensorimotor processes and, thus, to shape their experiences of linking sound and movement in a meaningful and fulfilling way.