The aim of the study was to analyse the survival strategies of the poor households in Boitumelo township. The research methodology used herein was two fold: Firstly, a literature research based on economic journals, previous research projects, books and internet was done in order to develop a better understanding of poverty. Secondly, an empirical research survey using questionnaires was undertaken. Over the years there have been competing theories which provide an understanding of poverty. Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. Poverty captures a wide range of meanings, depending on who is defining it. Although various technical solutions have been suggested for differentiating the poor and non-poor using the monetary approach, there is no theory of poverty that clearly differentiate the poor from the non-poor. The survey results showed that 41% of all households in Boitumelo are poor and on average have an income shortage of 63% to the poverty line. Poverty within the area has a gender bias as 76% of the poor are females. The large number of households below the poverty line provided ample opportunity for further analysis to find out about the activities that they use to sustain themselves. Being unemployed in government or manufacturing industries, the urban poor are compelled to create some sort of jobs for themselves. Street vending, odd jobs, gambling, seeking credit on exploitative terms, income from state welfare, begging for survival are just a few of the activities urban poor adopt to survive / Thesis (MCom (Economics))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

The purpose of this research was, in order to forestall future failures of foresight, to provoke those responsible for risk governance into new ways of thinking through a greater exposure to and understanding of the body of existing academic knowledge. The research, which focused on the scholarship of application, synthesised the existing knowledge into a ―coherent whole‖ in order to assess its practical utility and to examine what is to be learnt about existing knowledge by trying to use it in practice. The findings are in two parts. The first focuses on how one ―thinks about thinking‖ about an issue. Early work identified three issues that were seen as being central to the understanding of risk governance. The first is the concept of risk itself, the second is to question whether there is a single paradigm used and the third is what is meant by the term ―risk indicator‖. A ―coherent whole‖, structured around seven-dimensions, was created from the range of definitions used within existing literature. No single paradigm was found to be used when discussing risk issues. Three paradigms were identified and labelled ―Line‖, ―Circle‖ and ―Dot‖. It was concluded that Risk Indicators were used to performance manage risk mitigation barriers rather than as a mechanism by which organisations may identify emerging risks. The second focus was the synthesis of academic work relevant to risk governance. It produced a list of statements which encapsulated the concerns of previous writers on this subject. The research then operationalised the issues as questions, which were seen to have practical utility. The elements of the ―coherent whole‖ suggest a way to provide access into the original research. The research suggests that it is unlikely that practitioners would wish to access the original research in its academic format. Further work therefore needs to be done to present the original work in a format that is more digestible to the practitioner community if it is to be used effectively. The results of this research are considered to be preliminary. No claim is being made that these questions are definitive. The research is however addressing an area which is of concern to those in practice and has not been previously examined.

This thesis is concerned with the problem of place recognition for mobile robots. How can a robot determine its location from an image or sequence of images, without any prior knowledge of its position, even in a world where many places look identical? We outline a new probabilistic approach to the problem, which we call Fast Appearance Based Mapping or FAB-MAP. Our map of the environment consists of a set of discrete locations, each with an associated appearance model. For every observation collected by the robot, we compute a probability distribution over the map, and either create a new location or update our belief about the appearance of an existing location. The technique can be seen as a new type of SLAM algorithm, where the appearance of locations (rather than their position) is subject to estimation. Unlike existing SLAM systems, our appearance based technique does not rely on keeping track of the robot in any metric coordinate system. Thus it is applicable even when informative observations are available only intermittently. Solutions to the loop closure detection problem, the kidnapped robot problem and the multi-session mapping problem arise as special cases of our general approach. Abstract Our probabilistic model introduces several technical advances. The model incorporates correlations between visual features in a novel way, which is shown to improve system performance. Additionally, we explicitly compute an approximation to the partition function in our Bayesian formulation, which provides a natural probabilistic measure of when a new observation should be assigned to a location not already present in the map. The technique is applicable even in visually repetitive environments where many places look the same. Abstract Finally, we define two distinct approximate inference procedures for the model. The first of these is based on concentration inequalities and has general applicability beyond the problem considered in this thesis. The second approach, built on inverted index techniques, is tailored to our specific problem of place recognition, but achieves extreme efficiency, allowing us to apply FAB-MAP to navigation problems on the largest scale. The thesis concludes with a visual SLAM experiment on a trajectory 1,000 km long. The system successfully detects loop closures with close to 100% precision and requires average inference time of only 25 ms by the end of the trajectory.

This thesis is concerned with the key areas of social interaction and emotional understanding in children with autism with regard to their development. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a ten sessions long intervention programme with the objective of facilitating the children’s social-emotional understanding, as well as promoting their social skills and interaction with both peers and adults. Two methods of studies were used with 6 children - aged 7 to 11 - who had previously been diagnosed with high-functioning autism. The quasi-experimental study divided the sample into an experimental and control group in order to evaluate the intervention. The second method was a case study involving two children in the experimental group. Both approaches provided evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention programme in enhancing the social and emotional components. The results from the first study showed that the intervention programme was associated with improvements for the children in the experimental group in their overall social-emotional understanding, as well as their social skills and interaction with their peers. Moreover, there was strong agreement between the three sources (parents, teachers and children) about this improvement, which supports the reliability of the outcomes. On the other hand, children from the control group did not improve in the tested areas. The results from the second study revealed the typical description of emotional and social deficits in the two children with high-functioning autism. In each case there were specific aspects to their level of difficulties and the way in which they interacted with their friends and family. The data collected after the intervention supports the hypothesis that children with autism can learn emotional understanding (including empathy), and this was associated with an improvement in their social functioning. The case studies also showed agreement between the parents in their dissatisfaction about the level of support that their children received at school. None of the children had received any type of social training programme particularly aimed at teaching them these specific skills. The two methods of evaluation complemented each other. Although caution should be taken when interpreting the findings, owing to the small sample size, the study suggests that children with high-functioning autism respond well to interventions designed to support their social and emotional understanding.

This thesis aimed to provide a second validation phase of a recently developed measure: the Parental Understanding of Neurodisability Questionnaire (PUN-Q) (Moran et al., submitted). The PUN-Q is a thirteen item self-report questionnaire measuring parents' understanding of their child's neurodisability. This thesis prospectively validated the PUN-Q over three time points, prior to and following a child's attendance at a Tier-Four paediatric diagnostic assessment, for queries regarding social communication. Four main aims were investigated: 1) to establish prospective Construct Validity by comparing the PUN-Q to two other parent-report measures (perceived self-efficacy and parenting stress); 2) to examine test-retest reliability of the PUN-Q by comparing two pre-assessment time points; 3) to examine whether the PUN-Q is sensitive measuring potential pre-and-post assessment changes to parental understanding; 4) to explore the relationship between the PUN-Q and child emotional, behavioural and social communication difficulties. These objectives were addressed using data collected from 37 parents, due to time constraints the study was underpowered at Times two and three (n=26, n=11, respectively); bootstrapping confidence intervals were therefore estimated for non-parametric data. Evidence was provided for Construct Validity at Time 1, but not at Time 3. Test-retest reliability was suggested for the PUN-Q between two non-intervention time points. Results suggested that the PUN-Q is responsive to changes over time, and that the clinic's diagnostic assessment is effective in enhancing parental understanding. The PUN-Q was not shown to be related to child-related outcomes. These preliminary results suggest that the PUN-Q is an important measure that can reliably and conveniently measure parental understanding of their child's neurodisability symptoms. This study suggests a role for parental understanding within a wider model of parenting stress and coping with disability. Further validation is needed to allow dissemination to the wider neurodisability service, and to less complex symptom presentations.

Cancer is one of the leading causes of premature deaths across the world today, and there is an urgent need for imaging techniques that can help in early diagnosis and treatment planning for cancer patients. In the last four decades, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as one of the leading modalities for non-invasive imaging of tumours. By using dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCEMRI), this modality can be used to acquire information about perfusion and vascularity of tumours, which can help in predicting response to treatment. There are many factors that complicate the analysis of DCE-MRI data, and make clinical predictions based on it unreliable. During data acquisition, there are many sources of uncertainties and errors, especially patient motion, which result in the same image position being representative of many different anatomical locations across time. Apart from motion, there are also other inherent uncertainties and noise associated with the measurement of DCE-MRI parameters, which contribute to the model-fitting error observed when trying to apply pharmacokinetic (PK) models to the data. In this thesis, a probabilistic, model-based registration and parameter estimation (MoRPE) framework for motion correction and PK-parameter estimation in DCE-MRI sequences is presented. The MoRPE framework is first compared with conventional motion correction methods on simulated data, and then applied to data from a clinical trial involving twenty colorectal cancer patients. On clinical data, the ability of MoRPE to discriminate between responders and non-responders to combined chemoand radiotherapy is tested, and found to be superior to other methods. The effect of incorporating different arterial input functions within MoRPE is also assessed. Following this, a quantitative analysis of the uncertainties associated with the different PK parameters is performed using a variational Bayes mathematical framework. This analysis provides a quantitative estimate of the extent to which motion correction affects the uncertainties associated with different parameters. Finally, the importance of estimating spatial heterogeneity of PK parameters within tumours is assessed. The efficacy of different measures of spatial heterogeneity, in predicting response to therapy based on the pre-therapy scan alone are compared, and the prognostic value of a new derived PK parameter the 'acceleration constant' is investigated. The integration of uncertainty estimates of different DCE-MRI parameters into the calculation of their heterogeneity measures is also shown to improve the prediction of response to therapy.

TITLE: Understanding of Society by Czech Pre-school Children AUTHOR: Nikol Tomášková DEPARTMENT: Institute for Research and Development of Education SUPERVISOR: RNDr. Dominik Dvořák, Ph.D. ABSTRACT: The society's need to teach financial literacy to children of as early as pre-school age is ever increasing. Since there is number of methodologies currently being developed on this topic, the author considers crucial to explore a child's conception of socioeconomic phenomena associated with financial literacy before these guidelines are introduced in Czech nursery schools for practical use. In this thesis pre-school children's perception of such phenomena as profession, employment and associated financial flows, as well as the concept of poverty and wealth are being examined. Theoretical basis of this research uses certain principles of the constructivist model of development and education within the general framework of pre- school education. Our work has been also influenced by the ideas of J. Piaget and L. S. Vygotsky, in particular by those on children's thinking and thought processes. As a method to examine the above mentioned perceptions of children, an in-depth clinical interview has been used. The interview aimed to explore not only what knowledge of the selected socioeconomic phenomena the respondents...

This work points to unequivocal definition of suicidal behaviour. Work deals with philosophical conception of uncovering suicide based on individual philosiphical school or particular philosopher. In Greek philosphy we can find interfential adopt a stance on death and life; based on virtuous life in natural behaviour.Medival formSuicides as victims, women suicides as danger to morality, virtuosity resulting into rejection of suicide as an act of fatal sin, rejection of funeral ritual. Modern times definition Subject - of object structure, new formed questions about suicide, this time in new individual "me". Principle Shopenhauers "blind will" as "eternal return of selfsame"; suicide pointlessness. Nietches "superman", overstepping of yourself and your death, new morality. Existentialism as " been here" of your existence, anxious and lonely been versus difficulty to grip on word. Camus thinks about suicide as a serious philosophical problem, he turns back to the point of human existence; logical suicide outcome of absurd hero.Klíma as the iluzionism representative, Egosolipsism as the meditative knowledge, preparation for suicide. Heidegger define existence as the constant movement towards the death, mysterious entrance of nothing. Return to Sokrateses suicide as death from higher reason. Revealing of the...

There is much on-going effort to develop new methods for paring down complexity in decision support models (DSM). Many of these methods are so intricate and prone to bias introduction that they are rarely used. The first part of this work developed, tested, and evaluated a new methodology called Knockout (KO) for pruning unnecessary complexity from a Testbed DSM. Complexity is defined as the number of semantic nodes in the DSM. Unnecessary complexity is the maximum quantity of complexity that can be pruned without violating the requisite DSM fidelity. KO identifies all of the semantic nodes that make up the DSM, and determines their individual semantic contribution to DSM fidelity in a manner that avoids bias introduction. The node of least semantic significance to DSM fidelity is always pruned first. KO is shown to efficiently prune complexity from a Testbed DSM, pruning complexity by 36% while reducing fidelity by only 1%. Thus, the first result of this work is a new methodology to enable organizations to trade DSM fidelity for a reduction in DSM complexity. The second part of this work used KO to investigate the ratio of information nodes (parameters) to knowledge nodes (functions) as the complexity of a Testbed DSM was pruned. The a priori expectation was that this work would support one of two learning models in the literature: (1) the bottom-up model known as the Wisdom Hierarchy in which information is accumulated prior to the mental construction of knowledge, or (2) the top-down model known as the Reverse Knowledge Hierarchy in which knowledge is accumulated prior to the mental construction of information. But this work found that the baseline Testbed DSM (the full DSM prior to pruning) has nearly an equal number of information and knowledge nodes (188 to 191), and the ratio of information-to-knowledge remained within a few percent of unity as the DSM's complexity was decreased by successive pruning of the least-semantically-significant node. Thus, the second result of this work is a new model of human goal-driven learning in which information and knowledge accumulate simultaneously and contribute equally to model fidelity and complexity.

The purpose of this study is to inform instruction by increasing the body of knowledge regarding the relationship between college physics students' knowledge about models in science and their conceptual understanding with regard to electricity and magnetism. The data for this study was obtained through the administration of two instruments: Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism, a multiple choice assessment, and Student Understanding of Models in Science, a Likert-scale survey. Both traditional statistics and an innovative technique called Model Analysis were used to analyze the data. Analysis of the data revealed that there is a relationship between student understanding of models in science and conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism topics. However, the results of this study also suggest that without specific instruction on models in science, overall understanding of models in science does not improve after a traditional electricity and magnetism course. Additionally, this study demonstrated that not only does student conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism topics improve after a traditionally taught electricity and magnetism course, but also, students demonstrate more sophistication in their understanding of some electricity and magnetism topics. In the latter case, students showed improvement in their application of the expert rather than the naïve or null model of electricity and magnetism topics.