Climate change is making energy an important matter for scientists, politics and industries. Public concerns and energy supply limitations are changing the rules of energy markets. Fossils fuels are becoming expensive and energy policy makers encourage the development of renewable energies. Every energy sector is impacted by those changes. With a significant potential in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and fossil fuels dependency, the heating market is moving towards greener solutions. It is within this context that Dalkia is developing district heating solutions. This French company is one of the two large actors in the heating market in France and try to keep being part of the energy sector. This thesis work was realized within Dalkia and focuses on a study case: Sevran district heating network. This network provides about 50 GWh of heat with a 60% share of renewable energy (biomass). Developing this network is one way of increasing the renewable share in France. This master thesis tackles two extension possibilities. The study case starts with drawing the state of the existing district heating network. This allows to know a consumption limit in order to keep the 60% share of renewable energy. The district heating network is then modelled with a software called Termis to know hydraulic limits. Extension projects are simulated with this same model to evaluate their technical feasibility. An economical study is finally performed. The study concludes that both extensions are technically feasible, but only one is economically relevant for Dalkia. This master thesis was also the opportunity to observe the French heating market from an industrial point of view. Sevran study case is a typical example of how district heating companies are changing considering economy, energy policies and public acceptance.

There is a need in the field of international education to form sound assessment practices to provide support for the study abroad experience. This study conducted assessment research using the CrossCultural Adaptability Inventory (CCAI) as a pre and post-test as well as structured interviews to assess the impact and determine the cultural learning outcomes of the two main types of study abroad programs at Ball State University.According to the CCAI, there was meaningful cultural learning that occurred for the students who participated in study abroad programs for the Fall 2001 semester. The interviews revealed that the student participants experienced gains in self-perception, communication skills, and worldview concepts. Further implications include the continuation of assessment in the international education field and the move towards learning based study abroad models. / Department of Educational Studies

In this inquiry, I used a qualitative-portraiture approach to examine the social, cultural, and psychological influences on piano students' decisions to continue taking piano lessons. I collected data between 1997 and 2002. Data types included field notes, interpretive memos, audiotaped and videotaped piano lessons, audiotaped one-on-one interviews and retrospective interviews, email messages, and written documents. The main sources of data used for analysis were transcribed videotapes of piano lessons in the music studio and interviews with the teacher and three of her promising students. I drew on Vygotsky Halliday, and Wenger's theoretical frameworks to conceptualize my understanding of the social, cultural, and psychological issues that influence promising music students' commitment to learning music. I used Vygotsky's social-psychological-developmental theory of learning and Halliday's social theory of language to portray the significance of piano students' experiences in a music studio, their relationships with their teacher, and the teachers' use of language in the decision. Vygotsky's perspective on volitional-affective tendencies provided a framework for understanding how students' abilities to cope with their emotions influenced them to continue their music studies. I drew on Halliday's concept of Register to analyze the transcribed videotaped lesson data sets. I used Wenger's notion of Community of Practice to portray the social, cultural, and historical characteristics that play a role in motivating students to learn music. I found that being socialized into the music community, developing musical competencies, becoming a self-regulated learner, and being able to cope with the emotional experiences of playing and performing shape students' decisions to continue piano lessons. The results of my findings support that teachers influence their students' decision to continue their music studies by socializing them into the practices

No description available.

Recent technological advances and remarkable successes have led to genome-wide association studies (GWAS) becoming a tool of choice for investigating the genetic basis of common complex human diseases. These studies typically involve samples from thousands of individuals, scanning their DNA at up to a million loci along the genome to discover genetic variants that affect disease risk. Hundreds of such variants are now known for common diseases, nearly all discovered by GWAS over the last three years. As a result, many new studies are planned for the future or are already underway. In this thesis, I present analysis results from actual studies and some developments in theory and methodology. The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) published one of the first large-scale GWAS in 2007. I describe my contribution to this study and present the results from some of my follow-up analyses. I also present results from a GWAS of a bipolar disorder sub-phenotype, and a recent and on-going fine mapping experiment. Building on methods developed as part of the WTCCC, I describe a Bayesian approach to GWAS analysis and compare it to widely used frequentist approaches. I do so both theoretically, by interpreting each approach from the perspective of the other, and empirically, by comparing their performance in the context of replicated GWAS findings. I discuss the implications of these comparisons on the interpretation and analysis of GWAS generally, highlighting the advantages of the Bayesian approach. Finally, I examine the effect of linkage disequilibrium on the detection and estimation of various types of genetic effects, particularly non-additive effects. I derive a theoretical result showing how the power to detect a departure from an additive model at a marker locus decays faster than the power to detect an association.

This multi-sited case study aims to explore spatial capacity through pen-and-paper and hands-on activity tests, and explore world view perceptions of space in an attempt to show that spatial conceptualisation is a rich and complex blend of spatial capacity and world view. This study is oriented in a interpretive-naturalistic paradigm and characterised by multi-dimensional quantitative and qualitative methods. The research, set in five secondary schools in the Eastern Cape, was carried out with 32 Grade 11 learners and was designed around seven stages. This study attempts to understand spatial conceptualisation by recognising that all learners have epistemological macrostructures (world views) that shape their perceptions of the world in general and of space in particular. The main contention of this study is that spatial conceptualisation cannot be understood in isolation, through studying achievements on traditional pen-and-paper tests only. A comprehensive understanding of an individual's spatial conceptualisation involves the recognition of hands-on skills and world views as well. Spatial capacity, defined here in terms of spatial visualisation and orientation constructs, was explored through a pen-and-paper and a hands-on activity test. The results show only a weak to moderate correlation between the two tests, suggesting that performance in a traditional pen-and-paper test was not necessarily a good predictor for performance in a hands-on activity-based test. The investigation of world views was underpinned by a logico-structuralist process centred in conversations around nine bi-polar themes. Through a process of content- and meta- analyses involving the participation of a validation team, world-view profiles were established. / In terms of the applied pen-and-paper test which explored spatial capacity, this study confirms males' dominance in all spatial tasks, particularly in three-dimensional problems. This was also found to be true for learners from the participating rural school and for those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. In the hands-on activity test, however, the study revealed no observable gender difference in favour of the males, except for items that were characterised by the spatial orientation construct. Both the participating rural and township schools performed poorly in items characterized by the spatial visualisation and orientation construct compared to the other participating schools. Although participants from the rural and township schools found it difficult to articulate their world views in depth, the world-view perspectives of space of this sample reveal rich and complex profiles that are similar across all the schools. Despite leaning towards a Newtonian division of absolute and relative space and containing strong religious elements, this sample generally views space as mysterious, infinite and somewhat obscure. It often refers to space in Kantian ideas and related space in terms of subjective feelings. Females in particular, refer to their own `space bubble', for example. Out of the world-view profile analysis, a meta-analysis was conducted which explored thinking skills in terms of capacity to abstract, to be insightful, deal with complex issues, engage critically, and be imaginative. / This reveals that for this case, females were rated on a higher level than their male counterparts for their capacity to abstract and be complex (the capacity to identify related parts and to deal with composites), whereas males rated higher for showing insight, being imaginative, and being critical. Although there appear to be high correlations between the various tests, meta-levels and school performance for some of the participants, the same cannot be said for the sample as a whole. The world-view aspect of this study reveals a rich, often complex, understanding of space, strengthening the notion that world views are integral to a learner's cognition process.

Abstract The aim of this qualitative case study was to examine social service workers and managers approach towards the implementation of the Signs-of-Safety (SoS) model and their comprehension of working with the model. This study took place at a children and youth unit at a social service office in Stockholm. The empiric is based on three qualitative semistructured interviews and participant observations. The result was analyzed by definitions from Hasenfeld’s Human service organizations (HSO), Lipsky’s and Johansson’s definitions of "street-level bureaucrats", and room for manoeuvre. Lundquist’s definitions of "understand", "want" and "can" was also used, as well as the core-components that Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman och Wallace draw together of a successful implementation. The main result of the study indicates that the SoS-model contributes to the participation of children and parents and that it is complicated to implement the SoS-model in such a specialized organization. The study’s result also shows that the implementation is promoted by the support and the resources of every level in the organization and the fact that the initiative came from the street-level bureaucrats. The documentary system that comes with the BBIC is complicated to combinate with the SoS-model and therefore this might become a restricting effect.

Submitted by Daniele Amaral (daniee_ni@hotmail.com) on 2016-09-26T19:33:49Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseSMO.pdf: 13131734 bytes, checksum: eefbff0faf4d283aecbbbe364f540884 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-04T18:39:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseSMO.pdf: 13131734 bytes, checksum: eefbff0faf4d283aecbbbe364f540884 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marina Freitas (marinapf@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-04T18:40:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseSMO.pdf: 13131734 bytes, checksum: eefbff0faf4d283aecbbbe364f540884 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-04T18:40:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseSMO.pdf: 13131734 bytes, checksum: eefbff0faf4d283aecbbbe364f540884 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-05 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Zoos house many specimens of native fauna and have great potential to contribute to Environmental Education for biodiversity conservation. However, some studies have pointed that even when these institutions carry on biodiversity conservation actions, this subject may be presented in their educational activities or exhibitions. To investigate the potential of zoos in Environmental Education for biodiversity, we chose the cougar (Puma concolor) conservation as motivating topic. It was selected for the reason that this specie is important to biodiversity maintenance in São Paulo State and because there are many challenges in education for big predators conservation. The purpose of this study was to identify environmental education for the cougar conservation strategic actions that zoos could be do; to discuss the educational intent on animal’s exhibition in zoos nowadays; and to analyze the cougar grounds for their potential as facilities that educates for the conservation of this specie. Adopting Freire principles, that grounds the critical environmental education and a hermeneutic research approach, this thesis was set up as a collective instrumental qualitative study case. The research had a diagnostic stage involving five zoos from Sao Paulo northeastern, in which the research first purpose was developed, and a further analysis stage performed with three of these institutions to address the other two purposes of this study. To collect information, we mainly use zoos technical and educational teams interviews, exhibition and cougar exhibit observations; and, finely, informative stuff, websites and technical documents analyses focused on enclosures and animals. The main result of diagnostic was that any specific cougar educational activity had been performed. But, the issue was extremely important for these institutions, which reported many cougars rescues, including some that occurred with animals on display. The teams believe that activities such as campaigns between Sao Paulo State zoos could improve the development of educational stuffs and facilities that educates for this specie conservation. From second stage of the research, we highlight there are two purposes regarding to animals display: firstly it’s to provide close contact with animals and secondly it’s to educate people for nature conservation. These purposes are coherent with zoos conservation goals and environmental education actions. Although, on an educational exhibition it is necessary to set up the balance between elements that explore each one of these purposes. In this sense, the analysis of cougar exhibits shows that the enclosures and its labels doesn’t has been focused on biodiversity conservation. Mediation about this topic it has been done mainly by educators. That reveals enclosures weaknesses on role as facilities that educates, but their potential could be expanded with additional information inclusion that contextualizes the cougar in their locality. / Os zoológicos são instituições que abrigam diversos espécimes da fauna nativa e que possuem grande potencialidade de contribuírem na educação ambiental para a conservação da biodiversidade. Contudo, alguns trabalhos vêm apontando, que mesmo quando essas instituições realizam ações de conservação da biodiversidade, essa temática pode não estar presente em suas ações educativas ou em suas exposições. Para investigarmos o potencial dos zoológicos nas ações de educação ambiental para a biodiversidade, escolhemos como tema motivador a conservação da onça parda (Puma concolor). Esse tema foi escolhido em função da importância da conservação dessa espécie para a manutenção da biodiversidade no interior do estado de São Paulo e dos desafios existentes nas ações de educação para a conservação de grandes predadores. Os objetivos foram: identificar linhas de ação nas quais os zoológicos podem atuar na educação ambiental para a conservação das onças pardas; discutir a intencionalidade educadora na exposição dos animais em zoológicos na atualidade; e analisar os recintos de onças pardas avaliando seu potencial enquanto estruturas educadoras para a conservação dessa espécie. Com base em princípios freirianos que fundamentam a perspectiva crítica de educação ambiental e em uma abordagem hermenêutica de pesquisa, esse trabalho se constituiu como um estudo de caso qualitativo instrumental coletivo. A pesquisa teve uma etapa de diagnóstico junto a cinco zoológicos do nordeste paulista, com os quais foi desenvolvido o primeiro objetivo, e uma etapa de análise aprofundada, realizada junto a três dessas instituições para executar os outros dois objetivos do estudo. Para a coleta de informações utilizamos principalmente entrevistas às equipes técnicas e educativas das instituições participantes, observações das exposições e dos recintos de onça parda e análises de materiais informativos, sites e de documentos técnicos sobre os recintos e animais. Como principal resultado do diagnóstico obtivemos que nenhuma atividade educativa específica sobre a onça parda havia sido realizada, mas que o tema era extremamente relevante para as instituições, pois foram relatados atendimentos de onças pardas acidentadas, incluindo os animais que estão em exposição. As equipes consideraram que atividades como campanhas articuladas entre os zoológicos paulistas poderiam ser positivas para o desenvolvimento de material didático e estruturas educadoras para a conservação da espécie. Da segunda fase da pesquisa, destacamos como principais resultados a existência de duas intencionalidades com relação à exposição dos animais: proporcionar o contato próximo com o animal e educar as pessoas para a conservação da natureza. Essas intencionalidades são coerentes com os objetivos de conservação e educação ambiental dos zoológicos. No entanto, para que uma exposição seja educativa é importante que haja um balanço entre elementos que abordem cada uma delas. Nesse sentido a análise dos recintos de onça parda revelou que a contextualização promovida pela estrutura física dos recintos e pelas placas não possuem focos na conservação da biodiversidade. A mediação para essa temática é feita principalmente pelas educadoras e educadores. Isso revela fragilidades nos recintos enquanto estruturas educadoras, que podem ter suas potencialidades ampliadas com a inserção de elementos complementares que auxiliem na contextualização da onça parda na realidade local.

Budgetary control has been used and researched for years by both Western academics and practitioners. In China, it is re-emerging as a tool to implement management control, but might be used in different ways both in terms of understanding and operation. The research objective of this thesis is to examine the applicability of Western theories of change in management accounting in the context of budgeting in Chinese corporations. Challenges can exist because of the differences between Western assumptions and Chinese reality. The current thesis focuses on difficulties Chinese companies encounter in practical and deeper ideological ways: firstly, Western market-based ideology conflicts with an ideology which has been shaped by central-planning for decades; secondly, difficulties stem from the different cultural context of China which emphasizes hierarchical politeness, kinship ties, trust based on personal relationships, collectivism and social harmony, diligence and individual modesty, and less developed modern legal regulatory systems – these all contribute to China’s own way of doing things. This thesis also focuses on the transition process in China. Based on the assumption that budgetary changes do not happen in isolation from other management accounting changes, this thesis discusses these changes which synchronically took place while the case-study companies were implementing budgetary systems. This thesis adopts a longitudinal and in-depth qualitative case study research design, after adjustments made during the learning experience of the pilot study. It takes an interpretive and constructive philosophical underpinning, which allows the researcher to observe and understand the process of change, as well as the differences between Chinese practices and Western theories. Findings show that certain Western management accounting theories of change and Western theories of budgeting work in the case study Chinese corporations. Management accounting theories using an interpretive approach (for example, Berry et al., 1985; Scapens and Roberts, 1993; Ahrens and Chapman, 2002) lead the researcher to interpret management accounting practices from the practitioner’s points of view, and they have provided a range of terms to explain success or failure of management accounting changes. This approach together with Scapens et al.’s Institutional theory approach in management accounting have been found especially useful, in explaining the differences between Chinese vs. Western context. Furthermore, the contingency theory approach in management accounting gives a ‘platform’ which allows the researcher to assess a wide range of possible factors and their relationships with budgetary systems in studied companies. This approach is found useful in this thesis to present changes in other management accounting perspectives. Last but not least, this thesis finds existing Western literature in technical perspective of budgetary objectives, budgetary evaluation and participation, and budgetary effectiveness useful in a different context of China. By describing the change management process, an aspect which is not addressed frequently in the research literature, this thesis argues that to sufficiently understand Chinese companies’ budgetary changes, one also needs to understand unique cultural, social-economical and religious circumstances, and to adjust literature and methodology to adapt to these circumstances. This thesis provides an empirical experience concerning these issues. This thesis contributes to the understanding of management accounting change in China, and the tension which exists when Chinese companies are moving into Western management accounting practices.

Rather than a new masterplan I developed a strategy how to deal with a complicated area between the two Brno train stations. The land on the south of the city center has not been used for almost 100 years. There is a plan today, caused by removal of the main station to the south and introduction of the new city-train, to build up the area. The strategy I propose is based on the critical analysis of the current state of the area, of the plans that the city of Brno has, on the principles of the “compact city”, on my research on the potential users of the site and a study of life of 7 (imaginary) different potential user groups in the future, within the specific time horizon.