Due to the legacy of apartheid segregation South Africa remains a divided society where most voters live in politically homogenous social environments. This paper argues that political discussion within one’s social context plays a primary role in shaping political attitudes and vote choice. Using data from the Comparative National Elections Project 2004 and 2009 South African post-election sur...

In order to address the performance complexity of the various constituent materials of (dense-column) latticed concrete-gypsum composite panels and the difficulty in the determination of the various elastic constants, this paper presented a detailed structural analysis of the (dense-column) latticed concrete-gypsum composite panel and proposed a feasible technical solution to simplified calcula...

An empirical regularity in the price-promotion behavior of retailers of homogenous goods is explained theoretically. Based on this, a model is proposed for price competition in a market for a homogenous good with many asymmetrically positioned retailers. Asymmetry in this context refers to firms having potentially dissimilar loyal and switcher customer numbers that shape their pricing behavior ...

A system of ` linear equations in p unknowns Mx = b is said to have the removal property if every set S ⊆ {1, . . . , n} which contains o(np−`) solutions of Mx = b can be turned into a set S′ containing no solution of Mx = b, by the removal of o(n) elements. Green [GAFA 2005] proved that a single homogenous linear equation always has the removal property, and conjectured that every set of homog...

This thesis presents a binocular visual system constructed for fixation of objects of homogenous colour. The purpose of this approach to fixation is to evaluate the use of colour cues, which are well-defined in homogenously coloured regions, where earlier used techniques such as optical flow and correlation are ill-posed. Two colour-based tracking methods are developed and implemented, one prob...

We report on the effect of repetition rate on the formation and surface texture of the laser induced homogenous microstructures. Different microstructures were micromachined on copper (Cu) and titanium (Ti) using femtosecond pulses at 1 and 10 kHz. We studied the effect of the repetition rate on structure formation by comparing the threshold accumulated pulse ( F Σ p u l s e ) values and the ef...

Since most rumors are harmful, how to control the spread of such rumors is important. In this paper, we studied the process of "immunization" against rumors by modeling the process of rumor spreading and changing the termination mechanism for the spread of rumors to make the model more realistic. We derived mean-field equations to describe the dynamics of the rumor spread. By carrying out stead...

Aims. We present an investigation into how the cooling of the background plasma influences the propagation of slow and fast MHD wave modes supported by an unbounded, homogenous plasma. Previous investigations have suggested that the cooling of the plasma and a reduction in density could lead to the damping of fast magneto-acoustic oscillations. We aim to investigate whether cooling of the backg...

Load balancing in distributed computer systems is the process of redistributing the work load among processors in the system to improve system performance. Most of previous research in using fuzzy logic for the purpose of load balancing has only concentrated in utilizing fuzzy logic concepts in describing processors load and tasks execution length. The responsibility of the fuzzy-based load bal...

Topoisomerase II is the only enzyme able to cleave and religate double-stranded DNA; this makes it essential for many vital functions during normal cell growth. Increased expression of topoisomerase II is a common occurrence in neoplasia, and different topoisomerase II inhibitors have indeed been proven to be powerful anticancer drugs. For this reason, the topoisomerase II catalytic cycle has a...