Contemporary South African environmental response : an historical and socio-political evaluation, with particular reference to Blacks

Bibliography: leaves 128-148.The impress of history has been particularly profound in the sphere of environmental perception, in that South Africans, both black and white, have had their notions of the environment shaped by the political forces of the past. Accordingly, this study is placed within the context of historical geography, as its open-ended techniques and multi-disciplinary approach is regarded as the most appropriate way of undertaking a study which crosses both historical and environmental boundaries. A contention fundamental to this study, is that South African environmental awareness and knowledge is at a fairly low level and that black environmental interest and concern in particular, ranges from apathy to outright hostility. It is further contended that the attainment of mass environmental literacy is essential for the success of the environmental movement in this country and that this in turn, is dependent on the adoption of a strategy incorporating an integrated historical, social and political perspective. Historico-political factors such as: the impact of the colonizing process; the dispossession of the indigenous peoples; the effect of racial attitudes; discriminatory land legislation and, in particular, the imposition of the apartheid system in 1948, are evaluated in terms of their effect on the development of black environmental attitudes. The culmination of these factors has led to a distortion of environmental perceptions and attitudes, as well as to the alienation of blacks from the environment. Conversely, the initially exploitative white response to the environment gradually incorporated a preservationist element, subsequently evolving into a conservation ideology which generally ignored black interests and perspectives. The policies and activities of the first black environmental organizations are detailed, in an attempt to place their achievements in historical perspective. Research in this area was conducted using primary sources. Interviews with selected environmental and mass democratic organizations in the Greater Cape Town Region were conducted. Using the techniques of the focused interview, their stance on environmental issues was established and their proposals for a future environmental strategy elicited. It was found that, while only one of the nine mass democratic organizations evaluated had an environmental policy, they were all committed to the establishment of a democratic society as well as to the concept of mass participation in environmental politics. Based on the insights gained from the historical aspects of the study, as well as an assessment of the proposals put forward during interviews, it is concluded that certain preconditions .are necessary for the successful implementation of future environmental strategies, if blacks are to become involved in environmental issues. These are: the destruction of apartheid; the establishment of a democratic state and the enhancement of individual quality of life

Persuasion in smoking cessation online: an interpersonal pragmatic perspective

Persuasion in smoking cessation online analyses persuasive discourse strategies from an interpersonal pragmatics perspective within a range of online public smoking cessation sites in the UK. The book employs a mixed methodology approach to study persuasion on multiple levels, comparing professional, institutional websites with peer-to-peer sources. It shows how a content analysis can be successfully combined with a discursive moves analysis, laying the ground for in-situ, qualitative close-readings of relational work, of linguistic patterns and their link to persuasion. In this vein, the book provides a comprehensive picture of how the persuasive intent pervades the selected sources, ranging from the choice of topics, discursive moves to the relational work used. It reveals how persuasion is an intricate linguistic and relational endeavour, far from simply presenting information or resorting to scare tactics. Instead, interpersonal concerns take a centre stage in these sources, where the necessity of quitting smoking is boosted while the connection with addressees is always maintained. With its detailed linguistic analyses and its interdisciplinary treatment of persuasion, this book is interesting for researchers in discourse analysis, interpersonal pragmatics as well as health communication in general

‘So you feel a bit anxious?’ Psychiatrist-patient communication and treatment adherence in schizophrenia

PhD24 million people worldwide are affected by schizophrenia. Its complex psychopathology, including changes in perception, can incur substantial personal distress and economic burden. Finding appropriate treatment that attracts voluntary adherence is an ongoing challenge for clinicians to prevent relapse and poor prognosis. This thesis conceives the psychiatrist-patient alliance - mediated through talk - as an intervention point that demands analytic attention. Conceptualising ‘good’ communication is however hindered by a lack of a) conceptual clarity on its constituents b) knowledge of what actually happens in psychiatric encounters. Abstract ideals of ‘Patient Centredness’ and ‘Shared Decision Making’ are widely endorsed as beneficial to adherence, but do not pragmatically translate into specific practices, conducive to training. Following a preparatory systematic review, this thesis addresses a gap in literature by observing psychiatric communication in 3 mixed method studies. Synthesising coding methodologies and statistical analyses with principles of conversation analysis, two studies explore the association - and explanatory mechanism - between adherence and specific communication practices: patient other-initiated repair and psychiatrist questions. Treatment decisions, the precursor to adherent behaviour, are also examined: alternative resources that psychiatrists employ and their interactional consequences are mapped, with a focus on patients’ overt resistance. The findings collectively extend knowledge on medical interaction and demonstrate the utility of a novel approach to outcome research in field dominated by cross sectional studies. Clinical, methodological and theoretical contributions are yielded relating to six themes 1) the consequentiality of psychiatrists’ communicative choices 2) the manifestation of alliance and adherence in clinical talk 3) orientations to experiential expertise and the contingencies of antipsychotic medication adherence 4) reconceptualising ‘good’ communication: misalignment as key to clinical success 5) evidence of the interaction order in schizophrenia 6) reconciling the nuances of naturalistic interaction with global clinical outcomes.Medical Research Counci

Beyond Muslim Xenophobia and Contemporary Parochialism: Aga Khan IV, the Ismā‘īlīs, and the making of a Cosmopolitan Ethic

Aga Khan IV is the forty-ninth hereditary Imām of the Shī‘a Nizārī Ismā‘īlī Muslims (or ‘Ismā‘īlīs’ for short). As a Muslim leader, Aga Khan IV addresses salient issues concerning humankind in the contemporary world and expresses the challenges of living under such conditions through his public speeches and the institutions of the Ismā‘īlī Imāmate. His discourse is informed by the inseparability of dīn (faith) and dunyā(world), which is viewed as being a central function to the office of Imāmate. Aga Khan IV adopts a context-rich approach that addresses modernity by integrating commitments to theology with religio-cultural ethics, a formulation that facilitates the engagement of the Ismā‘īlī community in the contemporary world. A key feature of Aga Khan IV’s worldview is a tolerant and cosmopolitan attitude with deep spiritual underpinnings, which appeals to a broad range of individuals, not just Ismā‘īlīs. This research situates and explains Aga Khan IV’s concept of a ‘cosmopolitan ethic’ within concerns of human diversity and understandings of the Self-Other paradigm in human narratives. I demonstrate how significant initiatives of Aga Khan IV promote a cosmopolitan ethic, helping to foster a moral sensibility among the Ismā‘īlīs and communities at large. A critical analysis of Aga Khan IV’s ‘cosmopolitan ethic’ is undertaken through the consideration of broader discourses and experiences of cosmopolitanism throughout history. Moreover, his articulation rests on foundational precepts grounded in the Abrahamic moral tradition and is informed by an esoteric spirit of Islam that has long been captured in Shī‘ī and Ṣūfī thought.This dissertation also discusses the ways in which the cosmopolitan ethic is manifested within the institutions of the Imāmate in Canada. Using the case study of three institutions: the Global Centre for Pluralism, the Ismā‘īlī Centre Toronto, and the Aga Khan Museum, I demonstrate how these sites implement and craft a spirit of cosmopolitanism within their infrastructure and programing while exhibiting elements that are rooted in history and tradition

Supramolecular architectures for neural prostheses

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-230).Neural prosthetic devices offer a means of restoring function that have been lost due to neural damage. The first part of this thesis investigates the design of a 15-channel, low-power, fully implantable stimulator chip. The chip is powered wirelessly and receives wireless commands. The chip features a CMOS only ASK detector, a single-differential converter based on a novel feedback loop, a low-power adaptive bandwidth DLL and 15 programmable current sources that can be controlled via four commands. Though it is feasible to build an implantable stimulator chip, the amount of power required to stimulate more than 16 channels is prohibitively large. Clearly, there is a need for a fundamentally different approach. The ultimate challenge is to design a self-sufficient neural interface. The ideal device will lend itself to seamless integration with the existing neural architecture. This necessitates that communication with the neural tissue should be performed via chemical rather than electrical messages. However, catastrophic destruction of neural tissue due to the release of large quantities of a neuroactive species, like neurotransmitters, precludes the storage of quantities large enough to suffice for the lifetime of the device. The ideal device then should actively sequester the chemical species from the body and release it upon receiving appropriate triggers in a power efficient manner. This thesis proposes the use of ionic gradients, specifically K+ ions as an alternative chemical stimulation method. The required ions can readily be sequestered from the background extracellular fluid. The parameters of using such a stimulation technique are first established by performing in-vitro experiments on rabbit retinas. The results show that modest increases (~~10mM) of K+ ions are sufficient to elicit a neural response.(cont.) The first building block of making such a stimulation technique possible is the development of a potassium selective membrane. To achieve low-power the membranes must be ultrathin to allow for efficient operation in the diffusive transport limited regime. One method of achieving this is to use lyotropic self-assembly; unfortunately, conventional lipid bilayers cannot be used since they are not robust enough. Furthermore, the membrane cannot be made potassium selective by simply incorporating ion carriers since they would eventually leach away from the membrane. A single solution that solves all the above issues was then investigated in this thesis. A novel facile synthesis of self-assembling receptor functionalized polymers was achieved. By combining the properties of hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions of two polymers a triblock co-polymer was synthesized. The middle hydrophobic block was composed of biocompatible polysiloxanes and further derivatized to posses ion recognition capabilities via pendant crown ether chains. The hydrophilic blocks were composed of biocompatible polyoxazolines. The self-assembling properties of the membrane were then studied by electroforming them into vesicular structures. The ion responsive properties of these polymers were then examined. These polymers show emergent behavior such as, spontaneous fusion and shape transformation to ionic stimuli due to the synergy between form and function. The results from the thesis show that it is feasible to build a renewable chemically based neural prosthesis based on supramolecular architectures. However, there remains a lot of fundamental work that needs to be pursued in the future to bring the idea to complete fruition.by Luke Satish Kumar Theogarajan.Ph.D

Law, development and the Ethiopian revolution.

This thesis explores a series of middle-range hypotheses concerning the interrelation of law and development. These hypotheses are made concrete enough to serve as policy prescriptions by applying them to the problems of Ethiopia, a country which displays most of the development constraints that have been identified in other Third World countries. Development is best understood as a dynamic process, as the broadening of subsistence and small-scale economic, political, legal and social 'markets' that effects a cumulative growth in a wide variety of resources. In Ethiopia, given her highly stratified and fragmented societies, this entails a socio-economic equalisation and integration, a wholesale structural transformation rather than the narrow policies of an economic growth advocated by many development theorists. The magnitude of this transformation, the manifest need for extensive and intensive development planning and the socialist predilections of Ethiopia's revolutionary military rulers (the Derg) suggest that massive state intervention in the economy is both inevitable and the only feasible path to an Ethiopian development which is, nevertheless, fraught with many hazards. It is therefore impossible to segregate economic activity from what is, in Ethiopia, an undifferentiated mass of law, politics and administration. The largest single bottleneck to Ethiopian development is the virtual absence of any political development registered under Haile Selassie or the Derg. The role of law in eliminating an Ethiopian "soft state" (Myrdal's term), which is far from soft on the poor and powerless, is surveyed and law's role in the aggregation, allocation and delegation of a variety of resources, in the formulation and implementation of interrelated policies, and in the amelioration of species of injustice is analysed in detail

Probabilistic risk assessment of the Space Shuttle. Phase 3: A study of the potential of losing the vehicle during nominal operation. Volume 5: Auxiliary shuttle risk analyses

Volume 5 is Appendix C, Auxiliary Shuttle Risk Analyses, and contains the following reports: Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Space Shuttle Phase 1 - Space Shuttle Catastrophic Failure Frequency Final Report; Risk Analysis Applied to the Space Shuttle Main Engine - Demonstration Project for the Main Combustion Chamber Risk Assessment; An Investigation of the Risk Implications of Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster Chamber Pressure Excursions; Safety of the Thermal Protection System of the Space Shuttle Orbiter - Quantitative Analysis and Organizational Factors; Space Shuttle Main Propulsion Pressurization System Probabilistic Risk Assessment, Final Report; and Space Shuttle Probabilistic Risk Assessment Proof-of-Concept Study - Auxiliary Power Unit and Hydraulic Power Unit Analysis Report