Foreign Direct Investment and the Internationalisation of South African Mining Companies into Africa

The paper investigates the factors influencing the internationalisation of mining firms into Africa and the strategies employed. We focus on the FDI of South African mining firms because of the dominance of this country in the extractive resources industry for over a century. A semi-structured interview survey process consisting of written questionnaires and one-on-one interviews that incorporated both structured as well as open-ended questions was used. The structured questionnaire attempted to identify the entry-mode characteristics of the mining firms as well as the importance of the factors influencing the internationalisation of mining firms. The open-ended questionnaire was designed to be probing in nature, in order to identify how mining companies manage the factors deemed present in an operational context. More than 80% of South African mining firms by market capitalisation provided responses to the survey. The research revealed that security of tenure, political stability and the availability of infrastructure were the three most important factors influencing the internationalisation of South African mining firms out of the nine factors tested in the survey. The most widespread strategies used to manage these factors were political lobbying, bargaining and negotiation.Theory of FDI and the MNE (Ownership-Location-Internalization), Mining, Africa, Factor Analysis, Incorporating Country Variables

Evaluation of the cytotoxic and genotoxic potential of Khat (Catha edulis Forsk) extracts on human T lymphoblastoid cell line

This paper reports on an investigation of the cytotoxic and genotoxic potential of khat extract using a human T lymphoblastoid cell line (CEM). Exponentially growing CEM cells were cultured for 12 h in the presence of khat extract (0-2000 μg ml-1). Statistically significant, dose-dependent increases in; CEM cell death at dose (> 400 μg ml-1), in DNA damage at dose (>200 μg ml-1) and in micronuclei frequency, at dose (>200 μg ml-1) were observed. The genetic damage effects of khat extract on human cell line observed in this study could serve as a major contribution towards the understanding and creating of awareness of an increased risk of cancer amongst long-term khat consumers

Three-dimensional flushing times of the Persian Gulf

2000 FLORIDA AVE NW, WASHINGTON, USA, DC, 2000

Closing the wage gap between citizens and foreign labour: what can Saudi Arabia learn from Singapore?

Meshal Alkhowaiter examines measures Saudi Arabia has taken to close the wage gap between its citizens and migrant workers and what lessons can be learned from policies implemented in Singapore

Parallel-connected solar arrays

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the advantages of having various series-parallel configurations of solar arrays and make a comparison between them. The objective is to determine the best PV system configuration and thus improve the overall efficiency of a solar array. The primary focus of this thesis is to study the parallel connection of PV panels for achieving maximum efficiency while extracting maximum energy from the solar radiation. A comparison between a series connected and a parallel connected solar PV array justifies the need for installing a parallel configured solar PV array to achieve optimum performance. The DC-DC converter plays an important role in delivering maximum power to the load. A solar sensor array was used to monitor the solar radiation under various climatic conditions. Data saved using these sensors was then analyzed using software developed with MATLAB\u27s Graphical User Interface (GUI) platform. The PV-cell equations cannot be solved with the ordinary numerical method due to both the complexity and their non-linearity. These calculation were simplified through using the Newton-Raphson (NR) method along with other numerical approximation approaches. The software package is capable of displaying a number of curves including the I-V characteristic, the output power, and the output energy of the PV-panels for different configurations. Various scenarios were simulated and compared under different climatic conditions. The proposed method for parallel configured PV panel was found to be an alternative to existing methods --Abstract, page iii

A suggested programme for developing 4th year primary pupils’ performance in Mathematical word problems in Kuwait

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of using a suggested mathematical word-problem training programme on Primary 4 pupils' performance in mathematical word-problems. The study had a pre-post control group design. A treatment and a no-treatment group were exposed to pre-post methods of gathering data (a mathematical word-problem achievement test and a mathematical word-problem attitude scale). The treatment group was given direct and explicit training on how to solve mathematical word-problems, while the pupils of the no-treatment group received no such training; they were taught the same material they study at school. A "t" test was used to compare the means of scores of the control group pupils and those of the experimental group in the pre-post measurements. Results of the study revealed a significant improvement in the experimental group pupils’ performance in mathematical word-problems because they had attended the suggested programme. Results also revealed that experimental group subjects' attitudes towards mathematical word-problems underwent an exceptional change because they had attended the suggested programme. Their attitudes towards mathematical word-problems became more positive than before. In the light of the results of the study, some recommendations were made for improving mathematics teacher training programmes, for mathematics teaching, and for further research

Role of CLIC proteins in mitochondrial dysfunction in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Background: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a severe and currently incurable disease characterised by progressive pulmonary vascular remodelling and right heart hypertrophy. PAH bears many hallmarks of cancer, including apoptosis resistance, increased cell proliferation and mitochondrial dysfunction characterised by membrane hyperpolarization, mitochondrial fission and metabolic switch from mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis. Chloride intracellular channel proteins CLIC1 and CLIC4 are highly expressed in the remodelled pulmonary vasculature in PAH, and these redox-sensitive proteins regulate cell proliferation and angiogenesis. New data suggests that CLIC1, CLIC4 and CLIC5 may also act as structural components of mitochondrial membranes but their role has not been investigated. Hypothesis: Increased expression of CLIC proteins induces mitochondrial dysfunction in human pulmonary vascular endothelial cells (HPAECs) in vitro, consistent with pathological changes seen in PAH. Methods: CLIC1, CLIC4 and CLIC5 expression was manipulated by adenoviral gene transfer. The effects of CLIC expression changes on mitochondrial fission/fusion, mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm), mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS) generation, expression of mitochondrial proteins, glycolysis and mitochondrial respiration were studied in human pulmonary artery endothelial cells (HPAECs) and endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) derived from PAH patients and healthy individuals. The subcellular localization of CLIC proteins and their effect on mitochondrial structure were studied using transmission electron microscopy. Mitochondrial content, mitochondrial fragmentation, mitochondrial membrane potential, microtubule dynamics and microtubule-mitochondrial interaction were studied using immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) scans were used to detect changes in mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, while the expression levels of proteins regulating mitochondrial dynamics were analysed by electrophoresis and western blotting. Agilent Seahorse bioenergetics assays were carried out in order to evaluate the potential contribution of CLIC proteins to the Warburg effect. Mitochondrial proteomic analysis of HPAECs overexpressing CLIC proteins was used to identify key signalling pathways. Finally, the effect of CLIC1 and CLIC4 silencing and mitofusin-2 (MFN2) overexpression on CLIC-induced mitochondrial dysfunction in HPAECs, and ECFCs was also investigated. Results: CLIC1 and CLIC4 overexpression induced mitochondrial fission, and this effect was accompanied by a significant decrease in the expression of fission regulators MFN2 and optic atrophy 1 (OPA1) and the increased activation of fission regulator DRP1. Mitochondrial fragmentation was accompanied by changes in the ultrastructure of mitochondrial cristae and the reorganization of microtubule cytoskeleton. CLIC proteins significantly reduced mitochondrial respiration, increased mitochondrial membrane potential and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and stimulated glycolysis in HPAECs. These changes were partially prevented by the overexpression of MFN2. Endothelial cells from PAH patients showed increased expression of CLIC1 and CLIC4 accompanied by mitochondrial fragmentation, increased mitochondrial membrane potential and reduced expression of MFN2. The disease phenotype was reversed by CLIC1 and CLIC4 silencing or overexpression of MFN2. Conclusion: CLIC proteins are likely to play a contributory role in mitochondrial dysfunction in PAH.Open Acces

Exploring deep learning techniques to tackle the sparsity problem in recommender systems

With the inception of e-commerce in the early twenty-first century, people's lifestyles have drastically changed. People today tend to do many of their daily routines online, such as shopping, reading the news, and watching movies. Nevertheless, consumers often face diffculties while exploring related items such as new fashion trends because they are not aware of their existence due to the overwhelming amount of information available online. This phenomenon is widely known as "information overload". Therefore, recommender systems (RSs) are a critical solution for helping users make decisions when there are lots of choices. RSs have been integrated into and have become an essential part of every website due to their effectiveness in increasing customer interactions, attracting new customers, and growing business revenue. Machine learning, and deep learning (DL) in particular, have achieved a great success in resolving various computer science problems. Generally, DL-based approaches have enhanced performance remarkably compared with traditional approaches. Specifically, DL-based approaches have become the state-of-the-art techniques in RSs. Therefore, in this dissertation, three DL-based contributions are presented to address the natural data sparsity problem in RSs: (1) DeepHCF, a deep-hybrid, collaborative-filtering model that trains two deep models via joint training for rating prediction tasks; (2) CATA, a collaborative attentive autoencoder that integrates the attention mechanism to enhance the recommendation quality for ranking prediction tasks; and (3) CATA++, an extended version of CATA that employs a dual attentive autoencoder to leverage more of the item's content. All proposed models have gone through comprehensive experiments to evaluate their performance against state-of-the-art models using real-world datasets. Our experimental results show the superiority of our models over state-of-the-art models according to various evaluation metrics.Includes bibliographical references (pages 114-128)