The Politics of Institutional Reform and Post-Conflict Violence in Nepal

How does the reform of state institutions shape prospects for peace after war? Existing research on the institutional causes of peace focuses on how institutional designs, as the outcomes of reform processes, reduce post-conflict violence and promote peace. The literature does not, however, adequately address how the politics that characterise reform processes affect the legitimacy of institutions and whether or not violent protest against these institutions ultimately takes place. This focus risks omitting key explanations of how institutional reforms contribute to peace and the mechanisms by which this occurs. By examining the case of Nepal, where clashes between protesters and security forces killed almost 60 people between August 2015 and January 2016, this study shows that emotional rhetoric, elite control of decision-making, backtracking on previous commitments, the acceleration of reform processes, and the embedding of single reforms in a 'concert' of reforms that, as a whole, sparks fears of discrimination are all factors that can lead to post-conflict violence

Finite element analyses of the structural behaviour of pylons supporting an inclined coal conveyor

CITATION: Perduh, M. & Strasheim, J. A. v B. 2015. Finite element analyses of the structural behaviour of pylons supporting an inclined coal conveyor. Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, 57(3):44-56, doi:10.17159/2309-8775/2015/V57N3A6.The original publication is available at http://www.scielo.org.zaENGLISH ABSTRACT: As part of the coal conveyance system at Medupi Power Station, an inclined coal conveyor will transport coal from the stockyard to the coal transfer tower, and from there to the boilers. The conveyor is supported by concrete columns (pylons), in turn supporting the steel gantries on which the conveyor is located. The pylons can be considered as cantilever columns during the construction stage, while in the final operational stage with the steel gantries positioned in-between the pylons, a frame system will be formed. The gantries are connected to the pylons with custom-designed sliding joints, which allow limited movement of the gantries in the longitudinal direction of the conveyor. This paper describes how various finite element analyses of the structural behaviour of the pylons and the overall structure of the inclined coal conveyor were undertaken to assess wind and seismic actions. It focuses on modelling the behaviour of the concrete pylons during the construction period, a comparison between finite element models (FEMs) with different complexities and the implications of simplifying the FEMs. It will be shown that the simplified beam element models provide adequate modelling of the structural behaviour for this kind of structure. The modelling of non-linear connections between elements for static and dynamic conditions was also investigated, as well as the influence of the sliding joints between the pylons and the gantries on the overall behaviour of the structure. It will be shown that the overall behaviour of the structure can be highly influenced by the action of the sliding mechanism and that the force distribution between the structural members can differ significantly. Recommendations on how to approach the modelling of this type of structure are made. It is concluded that the simplified model can be used to capture the behaviour of the structure, as well as the complex sliding joint mechanism, which has a major influence on the performance of the structure and the force distribution in the structural system.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaarhttp://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1021-20192015000300006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=enPublisher's versio

Theory and application of various strip elements for structural analysis.

Thesis (M.Ing) -- University of Stellenbosch, 1976.Full text to be digitised and attached to bibliographic record

STBU system for the NIST 2006 speaker recognition evaluation

This paper describes STBU 2006 speaker recognition system, which performed well in the NIST 2006 speaker recognition evaluation. STBU is consortium of 4 partners: Spescom Data Voice (South Africa), TNO (Netherlands), BUT (Czech Republic) and University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). The primary system is a combination of three main kinds of systems: (1) GMM, with short-time MFCC or PLP features, (2) GMM-SVM, using GMM mean supervectors as input and (3) MLLR-SVM, using MLLR speaker adaptation coefficients derived from English LVCSR system. In this paper, we describe these sub-systems and present results for each system alone and in combination on the NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE) 2006 development and evaluation data sets. © 2007 IEEE