The research and creative portions of this thesis develop from the various responses individuals experience in the wake of a loss. The research into the evolution of faith in author Jack Kerouac's 'Duluoz Legend' and the central storyline of the novel 'Mayor of Hollywood' spring from the same well: the crossroads between death and faith. The research piece concerns itself with Kerouac's exploration of the spiritual interior in the wake of the death of his protagonist's older brother, developing a personal faith that blends Buddhism and Catholicism unfettered by formal religious practice, mirroring instead an older path of Catholic mysticism. Mayor of Hollywood explores the opposite side of the religious coin: the protagonist, Lucy Cassidy, has little compelling interest in her own spiritual existence but must address the practicalities of her partner's formal practice of Catholicism, including dietary restrictions, regular worship, moral strictures, and the religious formalization of the guilt process. At the same time, Lucy and Mark must resolve several deaths that have occurred, substituting the secular path of crime detection for the more spiritual quest to reunite with God. Linked by the shared topic of death, the two halves of the thesis address faith as a whole, exploring the interior and exterior spiritual life.

Cette recherche teste de manière empirique la valeur d'une marque de société pour ses actionnaires et les propriétés de la marque en réduisant les risques à un niveau corporatif. Ce processus s'opère indépendamment des récessions économiques. Les études précédentes, ayant établi une relation entre les activités de marketing et la création de la valeur pour les actionnaires, se concentrent principalement sur les marques des produits plutôt que la valeur d'une marque de société et négligent le contrôle des autres variables financières et de performance de marché. Cette recherche est fondée sur la théorie du positivisme. La théorie du positivisme postule que la seule connaissance authentique est celle basée sur l’expérience et la réalité. L’échantillonnage aléatoire des données a été choisi pour la partie quantitative de cette étude et pour la section qualitative de cette recherche, l’auteur a choisi l’échantillonnage et la technique principale de recueillir des données est l’observation.La contribution principale de cette étude à la littérature est précisément la marque commerciale, ses caractéristiques de mélange du risque et de la création de richesse pour les actionnaires, et l'utilisation des contrôles financiers et de marché, tout en vérifiant les relations entre contrôles financiers et contrôles de marché. En utilisant les données annuelles du sondage Interbrand entre 1994 et 2008, l’auteur trouve une preuve forte pour les entreprises qui possèdent une ou plusieurs marques globales très connues et la richesse pour les actionnaires. Ce résultat est cohérent avec la théorie actuelle de la marque qui postule que les efforts liés au développement d'une marque ajoutent de la valeur à l’entreprise et démontrent des caractéristiques12de variation du risque. Les résultats demeurent solides à la suite de l'analyse factorielle et de la régression multivariée. Dans la partie qualitative de la recherche, l’auteur présente des cas relativement notoires de marques corporatives – leur histoire et la raison expliquant leur succès ainsi que les différentes politiques de marque sont soulignées. Cette section peut être considérée la validation qualitative des résultats quantitatifs. Il s'agit donc d'une méthodologie de triangulation. Les cadres conceptuels et les modèles théoriques ont été monopolisés afin d’analyser davantage les cas qualitatifs de cette recherche. Cette perspective additionnelle a renforcé et mis en valeur nos résultats quantitatifs. / This research tests to analyze if solid corporate brands create wealth for shareholders; and have risk reducing properties. Previous studies that were relating marketing with the creation of shareholder value worked on product brands. This research is based on theory of positivism; positivism states that true knowledge is based on verification. Random sampling was chosen for the quantitative part of this study, and for the qualitative section of this research we chose purposive sampling. Observation is used as the main data collection technique.13The most important contribution of this research to the field of branding is precisely the focus on corporate brand, its risk reducing and creation of wealth for shareholders. Using data between 1994 and 2008, we find strong evidence that corporations that own superior corporate brands create wealth for stakeholders of companies. Later in the qualitative part of this research we went through some fairly known cases of corporate brands – their stories and how they managed to succeed were explained and some of their branding policies were highlighted. This part is seen as qualitative validation of quantitative results through triangulation method. Conceptual frameworks and theoretical models were implemented to further analyze the qualitative cases for this research; this added perspective reinforced and supported our quantitative findings.

<p>Road safety is a major issue affecting the road sector. Road accidents remain a serious impediment to sustainable human development in many of the developing member countries (DMCs) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Road accidents continue to be an important social and economic problem in developing countries like India. Growth in the number of motor vehicles, poor enforcement of traffic safety regulations, poor quality of roads and vehicles, and inadequate public health infrastructures are some of the road safety problems facing in India. </p><p>The object of this Thesis is to present a status report on the nature of the government policy towards the Activity plans implemented till now and which has to be implemented later for the reduction of road fatalities and for the safe roads, and also giving the guidelines for financing of remedial measures, institutional framework, physical characteristics of the road, traffic control and calming measures, road safety education and enforcement issues. </p><p>The aim of the Activity plans is to analyze the present situation of road safety in India and to indicate main problems in individual sector of the Activity implemented by comparing and taking the examples of some of the ASEAN Region who are successed in implementing in the individual sectors. The effect of the programme to real safety situation is estimated, and further plans could be corrected if it is necessary. Implementation of the goals for the coming years to reduce the number of accidents at maximum extent and give people, the safe and the steady flow of traffic in India. The vision of a tremendous change next 5 to 10 years is based on a big potential for improvement and a joint effort of all involved groups on all levels of traffic safety, centrally coordinated by the National Road Safety Authorities. </p><p>The Action Plan is deliberately divided into 14 key Sectors of activity in broadly the same way as the individual country road safety action plans. The sectors involve many different disciplines and a very wide range of multi sector activities but all are based on applying scientific, methodical approaches to the problem. At the end the thesis gives the recommendations and conclusion for the safe Roads in India</p>

Aesthetic criticism very often has been overlooked and considered a lesser form. However, many interpretations, applications and discernments can be obtained from this kind of art writing. Using Osvaldo Sánchez's work as a case study, this thesis examines how writerly art criticism offers an active reading framework of the work of art by using philosophical, literary and poetic constructions. In this regard, I will see how the "writerly" condition has contributed compelling insights to the History of Aesthetics, highlighting the connections and disconnections between Sánchez and other writerly critics, which demonstrates the significance of developing a flexible, available and aesthetic learning model of art appreciation. I will analyze as well various models of experience, subjective and objective, that release certain "openness" as a premise for their existences. Here are included the Kantian sublime, Heidegger's ontological Being, the surrealist cultivation of chance, Kaprow's happenings, and the attitude of disinterest developed by the vanishing poets as defended by the scholar Rafael Hernández Rodríguez. I will show that, by choosing an accommodating approach to discover forms of knowledge, an assortment of valuable empirical content can be found. Finally, I investigate the writerly work of Cuban critic Osvaldo Sánchez that does not adopt a fixed critical pattern. Instead, Sánchez's art writing passes through fields, providing us with a heuristic methodology in which the aesthetic emerges not as a preconditioned set of principles/procedures, but as a true lived experience.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy use are two main priorities leading to industrial sustainability nowadays according to European Steel Technology Platform (ESTP). Modernization efforts can be done by industries to improve energy consumptions of the production lines. These days, steel making industrial applications are energy and emission intensive. It was estimated that over the past years, energy consumption and corresponding CO2 generation has increased steadily reaching approximately 338.15 parts per million in august 2010 [1]. These kinds of facts and statistics have introduced a lot of room for improvement in energy efficiency for industrial applications through modernization and use of renewable energy sources such as solar Photovoltaic Systems (PV).The purpose of this thesis work is to make a preliminary design and simulation of the solar photovoltaic system which would attempt to cover the energy demand of the initial part of the pickling line hydraulic system at the SSAB steel plant. For this purpose, the energy consumptions of this hydraulic system would be studied and evaluated and a general analysis of the hydraulic and control components performance would be done which would yield a proper set of guidelines contributing towards future energy savings. The results of the energy efficiency analysis showed that the initial part of the pickling line hydraulic system worked with a low efficiency of 3.3%. Results of general analysis showed that hydraulic accumulators of 650 liter size should be used by the initial part pickling line system in combination with a one pump delivery of 100 l/min. Based on this, one PV system can deliver energy to an AC motor-pump set covering 17.6% of total energy and another PV system can supply a DC hydraulic pump substituting 26.7% of the demand. The first system used 290 m2 area of the roof and was sized as 40 kWp, the second used 109 m2 and was sized as 15.2 kWp. It was concluded that the reason for the low efficiency was the oversized design of the system. Incremental modernization efforts could help to improve the hydraulic system energy efficiency and make the design of the solar photovoltaic system realistically possible. Two types of PV systems where analyzed in the thesis work. A method was found calculating the load simulation sequence based on the energy efficiency studies to help in the PV system simulations. Hydraulic accumulators integrated into the pickling line worked as energy storage when being charged by the PV system as well.

Road safety is a major issue affecting the road sector. Road accidents remain a serious impediment to sustainable human development in many of the developing member countries (DMCs) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Road accidents continue to be an important social and economic problem in developing countries like India. Growth in the number of motor vehicles, poor enforcement of traffic safety regulations, poor quality of roads and vehicles, and inadequate public health infrastructures are some of the road safety problems facing in India. The object of this Thesis is to present a status report on the nature of the government policy towards the Activity plans implemented till now and which has to be implemented later for the reduction of road fatalities and for the safe roads, and also giving the guidelines for financing of remedial measures, institutional framework, physical characteristics of the road, traffic control and calming measures, road safety education and enforcement issues. The aim of the Activity plans is to analyze the present situation of road safety in India and to indicate main problems in individual sector of the Activity implemented by comparing and taking the examples of some of the ASEAN Region who are successed in implementing in the individual sectors. The effect of the programme to real safety situation is estimated, and further plans could be corrected if it is necessary. Implementation of the goals for the coming years to reduce the number of accidents at maximum extent and give people, the safe and the steady flow of traffic in India. The vision of a tremendous change next 5 to 10 years is based on a big potential for improvement and a joint effort of all involved groups on all levels of traffic safety, centrally coordinated by the National Road Safety Authorities. The Action Plan is deliberately divided into 14 key Sectors of activity in broadly the same way as the individual country road safety action plans. The sectors involve many different disciplines and a very wide range of multi sector activities but all are based on applying scientific, methodical approaches to the problem. At the end the thesis gives the recommendations and conclusion for the safe Roads in India

La thèse examine les liens entre la vision pluraliste de la science et l’éthique de la médecine tibétaine et les nouvelles pratiques en médecine occidentale, soit la longévité et la recherche sur la génétique amélioratrice. Elle cherche à cerner l’apport que la médecine tibétaine peut apporter aux recherches occidentales sur la longévité et la génétique humaine amélioratrice. Elle traite donc d’un enjeu social clé et du débat qui s’y rattache. La découverte et la description sont centrales à la méthodologie et informent l’analyse. Nous avons examiné dans un premier temps, les travaux de recherche sur la longévité reliée à la génétique amélioratrice (mémoire et muscles). Nous nous sommes penchés également sur les fondements de la médecine tibétaine en tant que système intégré. Pour ce faire, nous avons traité des notions telles que la santé, l’identité, la perfection et l’immortalité. Notre cadre conceptuel repose sur la théorie bouddhiste de l’interdépendance qui se caractérise par la formulation de catégories qui ensuite sont synthétisées dans l’essence; les deux niveaux d’interprétation de la théorie sont décrits en détail avant de passer à une comparaison avec la notion de complexité occidentale. La médecine tibétaine de fait présente un système où l’éthique et la science sont intégrées et se prête bien à une comparaison avec la vision pluraliste de la science à partir d’une perspective éthique/bioéthique. Les commentaires recueillis auprès des experts nous ont permis de cerner comment la science, l’éthique et l’amélioration de la longévité sont définies au sein des deux paradigmes de l’Est et de l’Ouest. Nos résultats montrent six points qui se dégagent au terme de cette recherche permettent de jeter un pont sur la vision pluraliste de ces paradigmes. Ceux-ci transcendent les points de vue doctrinaux individuels de religions ainsi que du monde scientifique occidental. Plus que tout, ils laissent entrevoir un cadre de références novatrices qui contribuera à la prise de décision à l’égard de questionnements bioéthiques. / This thesis identified and examined the links between the pluralist vision of Western science and the ethical studies of Tibetan medicine, and sought to determine how the bridging of pluralistic visions with Tibetan medicine might contribute to Western research on longevity and human genetic enhancement. The investigation focused on the current debate in these latter two fields. Discovery and description were central to the methodology and informed the analysis. Initially, we examined the research on longevity related to human genetic enhancement (memory and muscle), which addresses the limitation of the physical body, and explored its ramifications through such concepts as healthism, identity, perfection and immortality. Then examining the foundation of Tibetan medicine as an integrated system, we contrasted contemporary longevity research with the Eastern model, in which individual existence and experience escape limitations. We further addressed brain science research and the Tibetan medicine continuum, the unique quality of the latter being that the mind is used as a tool and is philosophically linked with Buddhism. Finally, utilizing the Buddhist conceptual framework of the interdependent theory, which is characterized by formulating categories of phenomena that are then synthesized into their essence, the theory’s two levels of the interpretation of phenomenal reality were described in detail before moving to a comparison with notions of Western complexity. Tibetan medicine employs an integrated system in which ethics and science are interwoven, providing the base for a comparison with the pluralist vision of science from an ethics/bioethics perspective. The insights gathered from interviews with experts in various fields highlighted how science, ethics and longevity enhancement can be addressed within these two paradigms. The research findings led to six points that bridge both the Eastern and Western paradigms by transcending the doctrinal standpoints of individual religions, ethical systems and sciences, and laying the basis for an innovative framework by providing concrete reference elements for decision-making in regard to bioethical questionings.

This work is part of a wide-ranging long-term project aimed at fostering students’ acquisition of symbol sense through teaching experiments on proof in elementary number theory (ENT). In this paper, in particular, we highlight the positive effects of our approach analysing the written reflections that the students involved have produced at the end of the project. These reflections testify an increased level of awareness, developed by students, about the role played by algebraic language as a tool for thinking and a positive evolution in their vision of algebra.

Presented dissertation thesis deals with mentally disabled adolescents who are partially grown up in children's homes and in children's homes with school. The discussed topic is interdisciplinary and multi-layered. The aim of this thesis is to find out, describe and analyze what fulfils everyday life of adolescents with a mental disability and a marginal condition. The thesis also describes what these adolescents experience, what they encounter with, what they imagine in regards with their own future in the context of their life in children's homes. Multidisciplinary focus of the theoretical part of the thesis approaches adolescence as an evolutionary period in one's life and is based on work of Czech and foreign authors of evolutionary and social psychology. Adolescence is also considered as a period of potential risk connected with behavioural disorders which can cause child's placement in institutional education. The meaning of education is approached not only from the philosophical but also from the theoretical point of view. The thesis also covers the question of current possibilities of adolescents to complete their apprenticeship in a certain field of study. Besides other things, the text analyzes the concept of mental disability, shows the change in its definition, and presents sociological...

This thesis evaluates the nature and role of `the glory of the Lord,' hwhy-dwbk, in Ezekiel 1-24. The introductory chapter will present the relevance of the topic as well as purview the scope of the thesis and the structure of its presentation. Chapter two lays an interpretive foundation for the glory pericope within a central theme in the book of Ezekiel. The intended impact on the exilic audience is discerned through examining the characteristic features of the hwhy-dwbk in Chapter 3. Chapter four identifies three functions of the hwhy-dwbk . A final function of the hwhy-dwbk is explored in its relationship to `the son of adam' in chapter five. A summary of the hypothesis is provided in chapter 6 along with a conclusion. / Biblical and Ancient studies / M. A. (Old Testament)