Thesis (MTech (Human Resource Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / The principle of the right to strike is internationally documented, as determined by the Committee on Freedom of Association. In South Africa, the right to strike is enshrined and protected in Section 23 of the country's Constitution under its Bill of Rights. Under specific circumstances, the Constitution allows for legislation to limit a right listed in Section 23. At the same time, the Constitution guarantees that everyone has the right to life and health care services. South African industrial action is regulated by the Labour Relations Act (LRA) No. 66 of 1995, as amended, which precludes workers who are employed in essential services from striking, because interruption of these services may endanger lives. However, the LRA also provides for the conclusion of a Minimum Service Agreement (MSA), where minimum services replace essential services. No MSA has been ratified since the LRA was promulgated in 1995. It is on this premise that the author investigated the mechanisms which have been put in place to create a balance between the right to strike and the need to provide essential services in the event of a strike. This study used a qualitative research design. Open-ended questionnaires were distributed to the target research sample. Purposive sampling was applied to a total of 30 participants who were selected from the Western Cape Department of Health's essential services. The qualitative data was analysed using theme identification to make sense of the findings. The research results reveal that employees who are providing essential services have the right to strike only if certain conditions are met. One of these conditions is the conclusion of a Minimum Service Agreement (MSA) to ensure a balance between the rights of health workers to strike and the rights of citizens to be provided with health care services. This agreement provides the duties and responsibilities of the employer and employees for the continuation of minimum services in the event of a public sector strike to ensure that service delivery is not interrupted. Specific recommendations are made by the researcher regarding the MSA, and measures are discussed to ensure that the minimum services within essential services remain operational in the event of a public sector strike.

<p>This thesis consists of an introduction and three stand-alone essays. In the introduction I discuss the commonalities between the three essays. Essay I charts the the main political cleavages among 59 Swedish unions and business organizations. The main conclusion is that there appear to exist two economic sources of political cleavage: The traded versus the nontraded divide and the labor versus capital divide. Essay II suggests a political rationale for why strikes have been more common in those OECD countries where the legislature is elected in single member districts (e.g. France, Great Britain) than where it was elected by proportional representation (e.g. Sweden, Netherlands). In Essay III I present a theoretical model of political support for different types of labor market regulations. From it I recover two implications: Support for industrial relations legislation that enables unions to bid up wages should be inversely related to the economy's openness, while support for employment protection legislation should be positively related to the size of the unionized sector. Empirical evidence from a cross-section of 70 countries match my theoretical priors.</p>

This thesis consists of an introduction and three stand-alone essays. In the introduction I discuss the commonalities between the three essays. Essay I charts the the main political cleavages among 59 Swedish unions and business organizations. The main conclusion is that there appear to exist two economic sources of political cleavage: The traded versus the nontraded divide and the labor versus capital divide. Essay II suggests a political rationale for why strikes have been more common in those OECD countries where the legislature is elected in single member districts (e.g. France, Great Britain) than where it was elected by proportional representation (e.g. Sweden, Netherlands). In Essay III I present a theoretical model of political support for different types of labor market regulations. From it I recover two implications: Support for industrial relations legislation that enables unions to bid up wages should be inversely related to the economy's openness, while support for employment protection legislation should be positively related to the size of the unionized sector. Empirical evidence from a cross-section of 70 countries match my theoretical priors.

The reliable operation of Integrated Circuits (ICs) has become increasingly difficult to achieve in the deep sub-micron (DSM) era. With continuously decreasing device feature sizes, combined with lower supply voltages and higher operating frequencies, the noise immunity of VLSI circuits is decreasing alarmingly. Thus, VLSI circuits are becoming more vulnerable to noise effects such as crosstalk, power supply variations and radiation-induced soft errors. Among these noise sources, soft errors (or error caused by radiation particle strikes) have become an increasingly troublesome issue for memory arrays as well as combinational logic circuits. Also, in the DSM era, process variations are increasing at an alarming rate, making it more difficult to design reliable VLSI circuits. Hence, it is important to efficiently design robust VLSI circuits that are resilient to radiation particle strikes and process variations. The work presented in this dissertation presents several analysis and design techniques with the goal of realizing VLSI circuits which are tolerant to radiation particle strikes and process variations. This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part proposes four analysis and two design approaches to address radiation particle strikes. The analysis techniques for the radiation particle strikes include: an approach to analytically determine the pulse width and the pulse shape of a radiation induced voltage glitch in combinational circuits, a technique to model the dynamic stability of SRAMs, and a 3D device-level analysis of the radiation tolerance of voltage scaled circuits. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed techniques for analyzing radiation particle strikes in combinational circuits and SRAMs are fast and accurate compared to SPICE. Therefore, these analysis approaches can be easily integrated in a VLSI design flow to analyze the radiation tolerance of such circuits, and harden them early in the design flow. From 3D device-level analysis of the radiation tolerance of voltage scaled circuits, several non-intuitive observations are made and correspondingly, a set of guidelines are proposed, which are important to consider to realize radiation hardened circuits. Two circuit level hardening approaches are also presented to harden combinational circuits against a radiation particle strike. These hardening approaches significantly improve the tolerance of combinational circuits against low and very high energy radiation particle strikes respectively, with modest area and delay overheads. The second part of this dissertation addresses process variations. A technique is developed to perform sensitizable statistical timing analysis of a circuit, and thereby improve the accuracy of timing analysis under process variations. Experimental results demonstrate that this technique is able to significantly reduce the pessimism due to two sources of inaccuracy which plague current statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) tools. Two design approaches are also proposed to improve the process variation tolerance of combinational circuits and voltage level shifters (which are used in circuits with multiple interacting power supply domains), respectively. The variation tolerant design approach for combinational circuits significantly improves the resilience of these circuits to random process variations, with a reduction in the worst case delay and low area penalty. The proposed voltage level shifter is faster, requires lower dynamic power and area, has lower leakage currents, and is more tolerant to process variations, compared to the best known previous approach. In summary, this dissertation presents several analysis and design techniques which significantly augment the existing work in the area of resilient VLSI circuit design.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1987.

This dissertation describes the role played by bird streamers in transmission line faults under HVDC conditions. The research was initiated due to the lack of knowledge of these faults under HVDC conditions. An explanation as to what bird streamers faults are, the role they play in the breakdown of air-gaps and a means of preventing bird streamer caused faults from occurring is made Experimental work has been carried out in order to gain an understanding of these faults under HVDC conditions. The overall aim of the experiments was to find a horizontal distance (protected zone) on an HVDC tower top, in order to prevent birds from perching around the centre of the tower. This will lead to a reduction of bird streamer caused faults. A brass rod was used as the artificial streamer in the experiments, under both negative and positive polarity (voltages in the range 0 to 220 kV DC were applied). Later in the experimental phase, a string soaked in a saline solution was used as a more realistic simulation of a bird streamer. QuickField™, an FEM package, was used to simulate the electric field in the region of the live conductor fitting and the tip of the bird streamer, to assess the degree of distortion of the electric field caused by the introduction of the bird streamer. These simulations served as means of verifying the laboratory experiments. This dissertation has proposed a relationship between the breakdown voltage and the protected zone length, based on the air-gap breakdown voltages for both I-String and V-String insulator configurations in the air-gap range 0 to 350 mm. These curves can be used in the design of transmission lines, as a means of reducing bird streamer faults. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-191).

Based on author's thesis (doctoral)-- West Virginia University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-288) and index.

No description available.

Σε αυτή την διπλωματική εργασία θα γίνει μελέτη της συμπεριφοράς γραμμών διανομής σε καταπονήσεις από κεραυνούς. Η πτώση ενός κεραυνού είτε απευθείας πάνω στο δίκτυο είτε κοντά σε αυτό προκαλεί βίαιες μετακινήσεις φορτίων μέσα στο δίκτυο υπό την μορφή ρεύματος Ι, πολλών (kA). Τα φορτία οδεύουν κατά μήκος των γραμμών και κατά τις δυο διευθύνσεις με τη μορφή οδεύοντων κυμάτων τάσεως και αντίστοιχου ρεύματος, μέχρις ότου εξαφανισθούν λόγω απόσβεσης ή διαρροής ή διάσπασης της μονωτικής ικανότητας των γραμμών. Η τάση που επάγεται (V=I*Z) συνήθως υπερβαίνει την κρουστική τάση αντοχής των μονώσεων του δικτύου και, αν δεν υπάρχει κατάλληλη προστασία της γραμμής προκαλεί διάσπαση της μόνωσης. Έτσι η στάθμη αντοχής της μόνωσης π.χ. των μετασχηματιστών, των διακοπτών κτλ. του δικτύου, πρέπει να είναι σημαντικά ανώτερη από την στάθμη της τάσεως, που μπορεί να εγγυηθεί η προστασία, που παρέχουν τα μέσα προστασίας. Η ηλεκτρική μόνωση στα περισσότερα συστήματα διανομής δεν είναι ομογενής. Η στάθμη μόνωσης (BIL) σε ένα δοσμένο τμήμα γραμμής μεταβάλλεται ευρέως. Επιπλέον οι γραμμές διανομής είναι σύνθετα ηλεκτρικά κυκλώματα τα οποία δεν είναι εύκολο να προσαρμοστούν σε κάποιο συγκεκριμένο μαθηματικό μοντέλο και να αναλυθούν για να προσδιορίσουμε τη στάθμη μόνωσης. Όμως οι μέθοδοι που προτείνονται σε αυτή τη διπλωματική εργασία είναι μαθηματικά απλές και αποδεικνύουν μόνο κατάλληλες προσεγγίσεις για τον σχεδιασμό των πιο συνήθων γραμμών διανομής. Ο σχεδιασμός της προστασίας από κεραυνούς σε γραμμές διανομής γίνεται λαμβάνοντας υπόψη τα εξής αποτελέσματα. 1. Τον αριθμό των βραχυκυκλωμάτων που θα συμβούν σε μια γραμμή διανομής όταν αυτή πλήττεται άμεσα από κεραυνούς. 2. Τον αριθμό των βραχυκυκλωμάτων που θα συμβούν εξαιτίας των πληγμάτων κεραυνών σε γειτονικό έδαφος. Στο πρώτο μέρος της εργασίας αναφέρεται η ΙΕΕΕ οδηγία για τη συμπεριφορά έναντι κεραυνών των εναέριων γραμμών διανομής ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας. Σκοπός της είναι να παρουσιάσει εναλλακτικές λύσεις για τη μείωση των βραχυκυκλωμάτων που προκαλούνται από κεραυνό στις εναέριες γραμμές. Συγκεκριμένα θα προσδιοριστεί η συμπεριφορά των εναέριων γραμμών διανομής σε περίπτωση πτώσης κεραυνού (πλήγματα κεραυνών και βραχυκυκλώματα από επαγόμενη τάση), το επίπεδο μόνωσης των γραμμών διανομής, η προστασία των γραμμών διανομής με προστατευτικό αγωγό καθώς επίσης και η προστασία των γραμμών με αλεξικέραυνα. Στο δεύτερο μέρος της εργασίας, θα αναπτυχθεί η καταγραφή σφαλμάτων και βλαβών λόγω πτώσεως κεραυνών στο δίκτυο της Μ.Τ. σε μετασχηματιστές καθώς και στις γραμμές διανομής Μ.Τ. κατά το έτος 2008 στην περιοχή της Πάτρας και γίνεται η συσχέτισή τους με τα θεωρητικά αποτελέσματα. / In the present "Diploma thesis", the behavior of the electric distribution lines under lightning strikes will be studied. A lightning strike,directly on an electric distribution line or indirectly nearby the line, will cause a violent charge movement.Which is actually current (many kA) propagating on the distribution line.The charges are traveling along the distribution line on both directions as traveling waves of voltage and current, until they disappear because of dumping,leakage or breakdown of the insulation ability of the line. The induced voltage (V=I*Z) exceeds the maximum impulse voltage that an insulation can afford, and if a protection is not present an insulation breakdown could be caused. Thus, B.I.L of transformers, switchers e.t.c of a distribution system has to be greater than the voltage level, which the protection can warrantee,and the protection utilities can provide. In most electrical distribution systems the electrical insulation is not homogeneous. B.I.L differentiates for a specific electrical transmission line. Furthermore,distribution lines are complex electrical circuits for which is difficult to be described and analyzed by a mathematical model in order to determine the insulation level. But in this diploma thesis, the mathematical models which are used are simple and proofing only the proper approximations for the design of the most common transmission lines. The design of lightning protection for transmission lines take care the following results. 1.The number of short-circuits that will occur in a transmission line if stroked direct by lightning. 2.The number of short-circuits that will occur in a transmission line if stroked indirect (in the nearby ground) by lightning. In the first part of this thesis is dedicated to the IEEE standard for the behavior of the overheaded electrical transmission lines. The purpose is to present alternative solutions in order to reduce short-circuits caused by lightning strokes. Specifically, the behavior of the overheaded electrical distribution lines when a lighting stroke (lightning stroke and induced voltage),the insulation level of the lines, the protection of the distribution lines with an over-running earth wire and the protection of the lines with surge diverters will be specified. In the second part of this thesis ,the faults and breakdowns caused by lightning strikes on the middle voltage (M.V) transformers and distribution lines,in 2008,at the Patras area will be presented and associated with theoretical results.