Social Beliefs for the Realization of the Speech Acts of Apology and Complaint As Defined in Ciluba, French, and English

Most cross-linguistic studies of speech acts have dealt mainly with two languages, a native language and a second or foreign language. The present study investigates a multilingual situation where the native speakers of Ciluba, French, and English are compared to the trilingual speakers of the three languages in terms of the realization of the speech acts of apologizing and complaining. It considers the social beliefs of the subjects of the four language groups for the realization of the two speech acts. The study is part of a larger study that was designed to discover the norms of the three languages under investigation and to see how people speaking a second and a foreign language, with different levels of fluency in each, can participate in the activity of the speech communities of the two languages without violating their socio-cultural norms, and what impact, if any, their knowledge of these languages has on each of the languages they speak. It was found that for the realization of the speech acts of apologizing and complaining, Ciluba socio-cultural beliefs were different from those of English and French, which are similar. In contrast to French and English, in Ciluba social distance and relative power between the participants play an important role in deciding whether the speech acts can be performed or not. The results also revealed that, despite the difference which exists between Ciluba and the other two languages, i.e., French and English, some subjects from the group of Ciluba monolingual subjects showed some similarities with the groups of French and English monolingual subjects in their responses to some items in the questionnaire. This deviation of some of the native speakers of Ciluba from their social beliefs was hypothesized to be a result of their contact with an urban environment and its mixed culture

The Influence of Sea-Level Rise on Salinity in the Lower St. Johns River and the Associated Physics

The lower St Johns River is a low-gradient coastal river with tidal hydrodynamics that remain active from the Atlantic Ocean through to the upstream end of Lake George (river km 200). Salinity in the lower St Johns River is spatially and temporally variable, whereby the salinity distribution is driven primarily by the combination of ocean processes of tides and storm surges and hydrological processes of watershed runoff. This study examines the probability distributions and modes of behavior of salinity for present-day conditions using data, numerical modeling and eigen-analysis. The hypothesis is that long-term changes (decadal scale) in the ocean processes will cause the probability distributions of salinity to adjust, and therefore there is a quantifiable non-stationarity of salinity in the lower St Johns River (shifts in the probability distribution of salinity, as representative of salinity increase) due to sea-level rise. The numerical modeling is validated against data, then the model is applied to generate synthetic salinity records for the main river stem and tributaries of the lower St. Johns based on present-day conditions. The synthetic salinity records are transformed into probability distribution functions (PDFs) and eigen-functions. The same analysis is performed on synthetic salinity records generated by the model when applied in forecast mode (i.e., sea-level rise). Comparisons of the forecasted PDFs and eigen-functions with those for present-day conditions quantify the non-stationarity (shifts in probability distributions and changes in eigen-structure) of the salinity in the lower St Johns River. The underlying physics of the cause (sea-level rise)-effect (non-stationarity of salinity) relationship are assessed in terms of coastal/river hydrodynamics

Social Beliefs for the Realization of the Speech Acts of Apology and Complaint As Defined in Ciluba, French, and English

Most cross-linguistic studies of speech acts have dealt mainly with two languages, a native language and a second or foreign language. The present study investigates a multilingual situation where the native speakers of Ciluba, French, and English are compared to the trilingual speakers of the three languages in terms of the realization of the speech acts of apologizing and complaining. It considers the social beliefs of the subjects of the four language groups for the realization of the two speech acts. The study is part of a larger study that was designed to discover the norms of the three languages under investigation and to see how people speaking a second and a foreign language, with different levels of fluency in each, can participate in the activity of the speech communities of the two languages without violating their socio-cultural norms, and what impact, if any, their knowledge of these languages has on each of the languages they speak. It was found that for the realization of the speech acts of apologizing and complaining, Ciluba socio-cultural beliefs were different from those of English and French, which are similar. In contrast to French and English, in Ciluba social distance and relative power between the participants play an important role in deciding whether the speech acts can be performed or not. The results also revealed that, despite the difference which exists between Ciluba and the other two languages, i.e., French and English, some subjects from the group of Ciluba monolingual subjects showed some similarities with the groups of French and English monolingual subjects in their responses to some items in the questionnaire. This deviation of some of the native speakers of Ciluba from their social beliefs was hypothesized to be a result of their contact with an urban environment and its mixed culture

On designing large, secure and resilient networked systems

2019 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Defending large networked systems against rapidly evolving cyber attacks is challenging. This is because of several factors. First, cyber defenders are always fighting an asymmetric warfare: While the attacker needs to find just a single security vulnerability that is unprotected to launch an attack, the defender needs to identify and protect against all possible avenues of attacks to the system. Various types of cost factors, such as, but not limited to, costs related to identifying and installing defenses, costs related to security management, costs related to manpower training and development, costs related to system availability, etc., make this asymmetric warfare even challenging. Second, newer and newer cyber threats are always emerging - the so called zero-day attacks. It is not possible for a cyber defender to defend against an attack for which defenses are yet unknown. In this work, we investigate the problem of designing large and complex networks that are secure and resilient. There are two specific aspects of the problem that we look into. First is the problem of detecting anomalous activities in the network. While this problem has been variously investigated, we address the problem differently. We posit that anomalous activities are the result of mal-actors interacting with non mal-actors, and such anomalous activities are reflected in changes to the topological structure (in a mathematical sense) of the network. We formulate this problem as that of Sybil detection in networks. For our experimentation and hypothesis testing we instantiate the problem as that of Sybil detection in on-line social networks (OSNs). Sybil attacks involve one or more attackers creating and introducing several mal-actors (fake identities in on-line social networks), called Sybils, into a complex network. Depending on the nature of the network system, the goal of the mal-actors can be to unlawfully access data, to forge another user's identity and activity, or to influence and disrupt the normal behavior of the system. The second aspect that we look into is that of building resiliency in a large network that consists of several machines that collectively provide a single service to the outside world. Such networks are particularly vulnerable to Sybil attacks. While our Sybil detection algorithms achieve very high levels of accuracy, they cannot guarantee that all Sybils will be detected. Thus, to protect against such "residual" Sybils (that is, those that remain potentially undetected and continue to attack the network services), we propose a novel Moving Target Defense (MTD) paradigm to build resilient networks. The core idea is that for large enterprise level networks, the survivability of the network's mission is more important than the security of one or more of the servers. We develop protocols to re-locate services from server to server in a random way such that before an attacker has an opportunity to target a specific server and disrupt it’s services, the services will migrate to another non-malicious server. The continuity of the service of the large network is thus sustained. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed protocols using theoretical analysis, simulations, and experimentation. For the Sybil detection problem we use both synthetic and real-world data sets. We evaluate the algorithms for accuracy of Sybil detection. For the moving target defense protocols we implement a proof-of-concept in the context of access control as a service, and run several large scale simulations. The proof-of- concept demonstrates the effectiveness of the MTD paradigm. We evaluate the computation and communication complexity of the protocols as we scale up to larger and larger networks

Evaluation of mass selection for grain yield and estimation of genetic variability in three selected maize (Zea mays L.) populations

Fourteen cycles of mass selection for grain yield in Krug(BSK) maize (Zea mays L.) population were evaluated. Estimates of genetic components of variance were obtained for comparison with those computed from the eighth cycle of half-sib and S(,1) selection conducted in the same population. The CO and the even cycles (C2 to C14), and two sets of testcrosses (Cn x CO and Cn x B73) were evaluated in nine environments to estimate progress from mass selection. Unselected S(,1) lines derived from the original, mass, half-sib, and S(,1) selected populations wer evaluated in four environments to obtain the estimates of genetic variance;Significant, but low (0.50 q/ha), linear response for grain yield was obtained from mass selection for grain yield. Increased yield was associated with delayed silk emergence, increased stalk breakage, increased grain moisture, and greater ear height. Estimates of genetic variability for grain yield indicated a decrease of genetic variance for the S(,1) derived population and no change for mass and half-sib derived populations. For many traits, half-sib and S(,1) derived populations had similar estimates of genetic variance. The mass selected population had increased genetic variability for silk date, ear height, stalk lodging, and grain moisture. Estimates of heritability were relatively high for most traits;Although significant linear response was observed from mass selection, the mean performance of S(,1) progenies derived from the mass selected population were 6.85% lower yielding than S(,1) lines from the original population. Reduced yield for the mass selection derived lines was accompanied by delayed silking, decreased ears per plant, increased ear height, and greater stalk breakage. The S(,1) progenies from half-sib and S(,1) selected populations, however, had increased grain yield, reduced ear height, root lodging, and stalk breakage, and increased ears per plant;Predicted genetic gains computed for each trait in each population indicated that S(,1) selection was superior to mass and half-sib selection methods

Coordenação escolar e melhoria das escolas missionárias (Católicas) de Cabinda/Angola

A presente investigação foi concebida para a compreensão do papel da Coordenação Diocesana da Educação (CDE) na construção dos bons cultivos dos processos de melhoria das Escolas Missionárias (Católicas) de Cabinda. Para tal, procurou-se saber o que a coordenação escolar, como órgão de gestão escolar, tem feito para melhorar a qualidade do ensino-aprendizagem e perspetivar o que pode fazer e como pode fazer para mover as Escolas Missionárias (Católicas) de Cabinda na construção da melhoria do seu modo de ensinar e aprender. Partimos dos pressupostos de que o conceito da qualidade de ensino está estreitamente ligado à elevação do rendimento do aluno, centrando-se no processo de ensino-aprendizagem e nas condições que o asseguram. Desta forma, a sala de aula torna-se o lugar propício de melhoria escolar. Por isso, a escola deve ser capacitada para ser uma comunidade profissional aprendente que assume os seus processos de melhoria escolar. Para tal, ela precisa duma liderança partilhada e uma pressão exterior de contas inteligentes com efeitos motivadores. Optou-se por um estudo enquadrado pelo paradigma interpretativo, recorrendo à pesquisa documental e à inquirição de atores, feita através de entrevista semidiretiva e inquérito por questionário. O cruzamento dos dados recolhidos, tratados e analisados permitiu fundamentar a convicção de que a Coordenação Escolar Diocesana deve ser valorizada e dinamizada para ser uma verdadeira pressão exterior que motiva e apoia as Escolas Missionárias (Católicas) a serem Comunidades Profissionais Aprendentes (CAP) com uma liderança distribuída focada na aprendizagem e desta forma, serem boas escolas que ensinam a todos os seus alunos.The present investigation aimed to understand the role of the Diocesan School Coordination in the creation of good practices in the school improvement processes at the (Catholic) Missionary Schools of Cabinda. To this end, it was analysed what the School Coordination Committee, as a school management body, has done to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process as well as new ways for the Diocesan School Coordination to support the (Catholic) Missionary Schools of Cabinda in building improvements to their approach to teaching and learning. We started from the assumption that teaching quality is directly linked to an improvement in student performance and focused on the teaching-learning process and conditions that ensured it. In this way, the classroom becomes the favorable place for school improvement. Therefore, the school must be trained to be a professional learning community that takes on its school improvement processes. To do this, it needs shared leadership and outside pressure from intelligent accountable stakeholders with motivating effects. It was decided to perform a study framed by the interpretive paradigm, using documentary research and questioning of actors, carried out through semi-directive interviews and questionnaire surveys. The crossing of the collected, processed and analyzed data supports the conviction that the Diocesan School Coordination should be valued and dynamized to be a real external pressure that motivates and supports the (Catholic) Missionary Schools to be Professional Learning Communities (CAP) with a shared leadership focused on learning and thus, be good schools that teach all their students

Synthesis and Characterization of Piezo-Magneto (PVDF-Fe3O4) Composites

This research entails the synthesis and characterization of a novel class of materials which incorporate both magnetic and piezoelectric characteristics. The composite is made up of the piezoelectric polymer PVDF and magnetic nanoparticles. The testing samples are produced using a spin casting process. The characterizations of the samples were performed using X-ray diffraction, Atomic force microscopy, linear staging, Dynamic mechanical analysis, Differential scanning calorimetry, and Fourier transform Infra-Red. X-ray diffraction and Atomic force microscopy showed that the presence of the Fe3O4 particles have no effect on the crystallinity of the polymer matrix, therefore allowing for the incorporation of inclusions without directly affecting the piezoelectric property. Changes in the thermal characteristics of the polymer matrix, observed using Differential scanning calorimetry, indicated increases in the thermal conductivity of the composite. Decreases in the heat of melting and crystallization were also observed and further solidified the conclusion that the presence of the Fe3O4 nanoparticles changes the thermal behavior of the polymer. It was observed from the DMA results caused an increase in the storage modulus of the polymer matrix which is related to an increase in the material's ability to store energy. Linear staging results showed that the presence of the nanoparticles had an effect on the mechanical properties of the composites and altered the time dependent voltage output readings. These results were used to calculate the energy capabilities of the composite material and it was found that the composites showed greater energy outputs with increasing amounts of nanoparticles. Interaction was observed between the embedded particles and an external magnetic field, which was found to decrease the energy outputs of the composites. This research showed enhancements in the composite material's energy outputs in comparison to the pure PVDF samples. This research also showed that the embedded nanoparticles interacted with an exteriorly applied magnetic field. This observation introduces a new dimension of possible activation processes for piezoelectric devices which have been largely based on physical forms of activation. PVDF which is widely used in research and applications for its superior output capabilities has been enhanced in this research and shown to have capabilities to exhibit higher energy outputs

Evaluation of the use of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) intermittent treatment (IPT) to prevent malaria during pregnancy in Ndola, Zambia.

Thesis (MFamMed)--Stellenbosch University, 2009.ENGLISH SUMMARY : Background: Malaria in pregnancy is associated with many negative outcomes on the pregnant woman, the fetus and the neonate. Intermittent Preventive Treatment during pregnancy (IPTp) using Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine (SP) is one of the main strategies used to prevent malaria in this vulnerable group in conjunction with use of Insecticide Treated mosquito Nets (ITN) and Indoor Residual Spray (IRS). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies on the prevalence of the disease in pregnant women, five years after their implementation in Zambia. If possible to make recommendations on how prevention can be improved. Methods: A questionnaire on socio-demographic information, history of malaria during the current pregnancy (any anti-malaria treatment) and malaria prevention strategy used (ITN and repellent use) was administered to 450 consecutive patients. Information was collected from the antenatal cards on the last menstrual period, date at which each dose of IPTp was taken, gravidity, and Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) status. A blood slide to assess parasitaemia was collected from each woman when they attended the labour ward. Results: 2.4% of participants had a positive parasitemia. All the participants took at least one dose of SP/IPTp with 87.6% completing the stipulated three doses. The mean gestational age for each dose were 22.1 (SD 4.6), 29.1 (SD 4.4) and 34.4 (SD 3.9) weeks for the first, second and third doses respectively. The Insecticide Treated Nets (ITN) ownership percentage was 79.5% and the ITN regular utilization rate 74.1%. Conclusion: We found that the prevalence of malaria in pregnancy in Ndola is remarkably low due to the implementation of different preventives strategies under the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) initiative. A considerable proportion of pregnant women received the three recommended doses, though the timing of delivery of each dose needs to be improved. The study also showed that the ownership rate of ITNs was high, but that the utilization rate still needs to be increased. Ministry of Health should continue supporting and encouraging the implementation of these strategies as they are certainly impacting positively on the reduction of malaria burden on the pregnant women.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING : Geen opsomming beskikbaar