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(1-3)-B-D glucan exposure assessment in poultry farms in South Africa
(2015-04-13) Dayal, Payal
Introduction: Poultry workers have an increased risk of respiratory symptoms associated with various irritant and allergenic exposures causing airway inflammation. This study investigated the levels of (1-3)-β-D glucan exposure in several poultry farming processes. The objectives involved categorising the different tasks undertaken in the poultry industry. After which a method was established and validated to detect and quantify the levels of (1-3)-β-D glucan using the Glucatell assay. This assay was used to measure the amount of (1-3)-β-D glucan poultry farm workers were exposed to using personal sampling. Thereafter, general respiratory symptoms were described briefly via the administration of a respiratory questionnaire. Method: A total of 308 personal air samples were collected from several poultry farming processes (rearing, laying, hatchery, broilers, catching) of a large poultry farm in the North West Province. A walkthrough checklist was used to obtain information on various exposure determinants such as farm size, number of chickens, ventilation system, bedding material used and poultry feed used. The Glucatell assay (Associates of Cape Cod, East Falmouth, MA, USA) was used to quantify the concentration of (1-3)-β-D glucans in the air samples. Results: The geometric mean concentrations of (1-3)-β-D glucans ranged from 24.38 to 645.98 ng/m3 across the various poultry farming processes investigated. Workers in the broiler farms were exposed to two times higher levels of (1-3)-β-D glucans compared to those in the breeding farms. The sizes of the broiler farm houses as well as the age of the chickens were among the main determinants of exposure. The larger broiler farm houses (GM=5.2 ng/m3, GSD=3.74) had significantly (p<0.05) lower levels than the smaller broiler farm houses (GM=6.4 ng/m3, GSD=2.14) whilst houses with older chickens had higher (1-3)-β-D glucan levels (G=5.8 ng/m3,
A 10 year evaluation of postpartum maternal mortality at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital [2004 - 2013]
(2016) Moletsane, Mabereng Matsepo
This study examined postpartum maternal deaths at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (CHBH) between January 2004 and December 2013. The aim was to gather reliable information about the trends and rates in postpartum maternal mortality which is important for resource mobilisation, planning and improvement in progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 i.e. a 75% reduction in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR)from 1990 to 2015. The causes and predisposing factors to maternal deaths were scrutinised to identify factors involved in the stagnation of the MMR. The medical records of all mothers who died at CHBH during 2004-2013, as contained in the individual patient files were used as data sources. There were 409 maternal deaths out of 224 562 live births of which 261 were postpartum deaths. The MMR was 182 per 100 000 live births for the 10 years evaluated. The main causes of death were indirect causes, predominantly non-pregnancy related infections, with respiratory tract infection, mostly pneumonia and tuberculosis being the predominant contributing factors. It is recommended that all maternity units conduct, review and publish MMR in order to highlight and identify factors involved in the failure to reach the Millennium Developmental Goal i.e. a 75% reduction in MMR by 2015.Factors that are involved in the stagnation need to be more completely identified.
A 10 year review of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome in children: a single-centre experience, Johannesburg, South Africa
(2016-10-12) Bakhiet, Yassir Mahgoub
Background: Idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (INS) is the commonest type of nephropathy seen in children. The histopathological types and steroid response patterns of INS have been changing over the years and this has been attributed to differences in ethnicity and geographical location. The aim of this study was to determine the steroid response pattern, renal histopathology and complications in a cohort of the children treated for INS by the Division of Paediatric Nephrology, CMJAH, Johannesburg, South Africa between 2004 and 2013. Method: A retrospective study was carried out to review the records of 163 children between the ages of 2 and 16 years managed for INS over a 10 year period. Results: The majority (111) of the 163 children were of the black racial group. There were 97 boys and 66 girls. The mean age of onset was 5.3 years ± 2.8, with the highest rate of INS seen in the 2-6 year age group (71.2%). Only 132/163 had a renal biopsy performed (MCD 52.3%, FSGS 43.2%, MesPGN 4.5%). The black race had a similar rate of MCD (38.8%) and FSGS (37.8%), while the white race had a higher rate of MCD (64.3%) when compared to FSGS (14.3%). Ninety four (57.7%) patients were steroid sensitive (SSNS) while 69 patients (42.3%) were steroid resistant (SRNS). Minimal change disease was the most common histopathological type seen in SSNS (60%), while FSGS was the most common observed in patients who had SRNS (65.2%). There was a statistically significant association between the various steroid response patterns and the different histopathological types. The highest rate of resistance to all treatment after a mean follow up of 60 months was seen among children of the mixed race and black racial groups (50.0% and 40.5% respectively). Stunted growth (52.1%), hypertension (47.2%) and reduced eGFR (25.8%) were the most common complications observed. Conclusions: There appears to be an increase in the rate of FSGS in all the racial groups, and an increase in the rate of MCD in the black race group, when compared to previous South African studies. Furthermore, steroid response was also observed to have increased significantly among the black racial group when compared with previous studies. Although hypertension was the most common complication observed in our cohort, a very high rate of stunted growth was also observed. This may be due to the significant number of patients with reduced eGFR, SRNS and FSGS in our cohort. The use of long term steroid therapy may have contributed to this high rate.
A 10-year retrospective review on mob justice fatalities examined at the Germiston Forensic Pathology Medico-legal Service
(2018) Medar, Sajida
Mob justice fatalities are a gross violation of human rights in that they represent extra-legal punishment. There is a paucity of research relating to the demographics of at-risk groups, nature of injuries and the impact to the Forensic Pathology Service (FPS). This was a retrospective study over 10 years at Germiston Forensic Pathology medico-legal service. The objectives were to describe the demographics of the deceased, identify the profile of at-risk groups, describe the trends of the number of fatalities and causes of death over time, assess hospitalisation frequency, describe the nature and location of injuries sustained, and to report on ancillary investigations performed. Data was collected from the South African Police Service (SAPS) 180 scene investigation record form, hospital notes, final post mortem report, Notification of death (BI1663) form and additional statements. 354 cases were analysed. There was no clear trend in the number of mob justice fatalities. Six areas were highlighted to have a higher incidence of mob justice fatalities. The at-risk population was young to middleaged black South African males. The majority of deaths were due to blunt force head injury, and were so severe that most deaths occurred within 24 hours of injury. A standardised operating procedure should be developed for uniformity in managing mob justice cases. Adequate resources should be distributed to appropriate departments to enable a reasonable turnaround time of ancillary investigations and high incidence areas should receive sufficient and appropriately skilled resources to engage with and monitor the respective communities to curb these killings.
"100 papers": an anthology of flash fiction and prose poetry with a theoretical postscript
(2008-05-30T07:24:40Z) Jobson, Liesl Karen
[NO ABSTRACT PRESENT]
120 years of earth and environmental sciences in teh South Africa journal of Sciences
Jennifer Fitchett; Mukhtaar Waja; Cassia Holtz; Thea Earnest; Carmen Kganane; Ariel Prinsloo
120 years of excellence in service to Mining.
(The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy., 2017-04) Musingwini, C.
The Wits School of Mining Engineering, which is celebrating 120 years of service to the mining industry, is the seed from which the University of the Witwatersrand grew, and is now the largest mining school in the English-speaking world.
125dihydroxyvitamin D3 augment lowdose PMAbasefd monocytetomacrophage differetiation in THP1 cells
(ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV) Bronwyn Mol; Janet Wasinda; Yi Xu; Nikki Gentle; Vanessa Meyer
15th Biennial Meeting of the Palaeontological Society of Southern Africa, Albany Museum and Rhodes University, 7–10 September 2006
(BERNARD PRICE INSTITUTE FOR PALAEONTOLOGICAL RESEARCH, 2007)
The 1907 strike: A reassessment
(1994-08-22) Shear, Keith
The 1907 white miners' strike on the Witwatersrand has often been used to illustrate significant trends and changes in the political economy of early twentieth-century South Africa. The principal themes are well-known. First, the maintenance of production during the strike by African and Chinese workers demonstrated that some of the skills of immigrant white miners could be dispensed with, marking the beginning of a long struggle to remove white underground workers from productive to mainly supervisory roles. Second, a significant number of Afrikaners, introduced as strike-breakers, entered the mining industry for the first time. This provided one element in a convergence of interests between the industry and the new Het Volk government, which, anxious to assist the Afrikaner unemployed who constituted both a social threat and a section of its electoral support, requested Imperial troops in support of its ‘right to work’ policy during the strike. This indication of good faith in helping mining capital to reduce working costs through an attack on white labour was also a signal to potential foreign investors and lenders that the Transvaal was ‘safe for capital’; its government had accepted the idea that in fostering the industry it was promoting the state's major source of revenue and financial security, a goal to which any competing social concern would henceforth be subordinated. Despite being used to illuminate such important issues, no detailed account of the 1907 strike has been published, while the few books and articles that offer more than a bare outline of the chief events before commenting on their significance are not always accurate. From this first major conflict between capital and organized labour on the Rand a good deal more can be learned than the bald summary of its outcome conventionally rendered in statistics demonstrating reductions in working costs or an increase in the percentage of locally-born whites employed. Such figures, while doubtless important, contribute little towards an understanding of how these results were achieved, and can be misleading if used to support far tidier metanarratives about relations between state and capital than a detailed discussion of the progress and resolution of the conflict would suggest. The purpose of this paper is to offer a careful reconstruction of the strike that will situate the course of events in the context of the production imperatives of the mining industry; that will shed light on the coercive capacity of the post-reconstruction state; that will illuminate the texture of white workers' experience; that will permit a reading of the significance of the strike against the background of the political history of the period; and that will above all convey something of the magnitude of a conflict that has tended to be diminished by being seen as the first and smallest of a series of increasingly menacing challenges by white labour to the power of state and capital in early twentieth-century South Africa.
The 1913 and 1914 white workers' strikes
(1978-10) O'Quigley, A.
The gold mining industry on the Rand began in the 1880's and by 1913 there were 63 mines employing about 21 000 white workers and 200 000 black workers. Gold, the international money commodity, had a fixed price. This meant there was a certain constraint with regard to the costs of production because increases could not be passed on to the buyers. The gold bearing ore on the Rand was deep lying and of a consistent low grade throughout the Reef. Because of its depth large amounts of capital investment were required for its exploitation. This was provided by finance houses in Europe through whom groups of gold mining companies were controlled. The profitability of the industry was constrained by the fixed price, the low grade of the ore and the need for large scale capital investment. Because of this the industry depended on cheap labour. The problem of finding and maintaining a supply of cheap labour dominated the policies of the industry. In the early years the great majority of blacks lived in the rural areas subsisting as independent farmers or on white owned land as squatters, share croppers and wage labourers…. As far as the gold mining industry was concerned in the early years some blacks came voluntarily in order to obtain cash to buy European produced goods such as guns. But increasingly black labour was obtained by recruiters who worked for the gold mining industry…. The black labour force thus obtained was lacking in any experience of industrial life and was restricted to unskilled work. In order to develop the mines and carry out certain skilled mining operations the gold companies also needed a supply of skilled workers. These were not available in South Africa. Skilled miners from overseas were induced £o come to the. Witwatersrand because of the relatively high wages. Most of them originated in Britain. Skilled miners tended to be nomadic and some had experience of work in Australia, America and other gold fields throughout the world. These miners' brought to South Africa their trade union experience and soon established branches of British craft unions and an autonomous miners union. As blacks became experienced in gold mining operations the TCM wanted to be able to substitute this labour for the more expensive white workers. Skilled whites were still necessary but where skills could be fragmented blacks could carry out some of the operations…. This is largely an empirical study of the 1913 miners' strike and the 1914 railway strike. I concentrate on events rather than analysis and would be glad of any help from people in the seminar. Although it is impossible to exhaustively state the causes for the 1913 strike I outline some of the factors I see as important. These include the insecurity of white miners because of their fear of being replaced by black and their reaction to general labour condition including their insecurity of tenure and the occupational disease phthisis. The strike itself revolved around the question of the recognition of trade unions which the TCM refused to do.
The 1920 black mineworkers strike
(1987-02-09T10:50:09Z) Bonner, Phil
The 1946 African Mine Workers' Strike in the political economy of South Africa
(1975-06) O'Meara, Dan
The 1949 Durban 'Riots' - a case-study in race and class
(1974-08) Webster, E.C.
This paper was written as a response to the somewhat abstract discussions that sometimes take place in university seminars on the relative weight of class, race and ethnicity in explaining human behaviour. It rests on the assumption that conceptual clarification has limited value, unless conceptual analysis is followed by a concrete historical or sociological analysis of a particular social situation. The Durban 'riots' of 1949 was chosen as a case-study because it has been widely used by 'separate development theorists' as an example of the inevitability of conflict between the races, without any attempt being made to relate this conflict to the political economy. This paper is an attempt to develop a theoretical franework that recognizes the embryonic and partial nature of class formation in a 'plural society' through the notion of class 'suppression', but nonetheless attempts to derive a meaningful frame of reference for explaining a class based act. In Part 1 I will introduce the theoretical framework. Part II, III and IV is an attempt to give a portrait of the participants in the riot, analysing their composition, motives and how activity was generated among them. Here a note of caution needs to be introduced. I am still at a tentative stage in my research in two crucial areas; firstly, on the 'consciousness' of the participants I have to date only had access to written material such as newspapers and reports. These sources are a partial perspective - this includes in particular, the official Government Inquiry into the riots. Hopefully I will have a fuller picture when I have extended my data-gathering to interviews of participants. Secondly, I realise that in a crucial area of my argument among the African traders I am still at an early stage of research. Part V tries to place the conflict in a wider perspective of the social structure.
The 1952 Jan van Riebeeck tercentenary festival: constructing and contesting public national history
(1952-02-27T06:03:53Z) Rassool, Ciraj; Witz, Leslie
The 1976 Soweto uprising
(1994-05-02) Gerhart, Gail M.
The 1989 black matriculation failure rate : what were the classroom practices?
(1994) Zimba, Maoto David
This research is an attempt to reveal aspects of History teaching concealed in conventional or popular beliefs about the Black Matriculation pass/fail statistics. The classroom practices of two History teachers are described. One comes from an "achieving" Soweto secondary school. The school is popularly contrived as an "achieving" school because it is known in the community for producing better than average DET Matriculation results. The classroom practices of another teacher. from an "underachieving" school. are also described. This school is known in the community for producing lower than average DET results over a number of years. These classroom practices are illuminated against the backdrop of the high pass/low failure rate during the eighties, with particular reference to the year 1989. This is the year in which the DET matriculation pass/failure rate was the worst in the decade of the eighties. (Abbreviation abstract)
A 20 year review of South African early grade mathematics research article
Samantha Morrison; Mellony Graven; Hamsa Venkatakrishnan; Pamela Vale
The 2010 PMTCT programme as implemented at community healthcare centres in the Limpopo province: a nursing perspective
(2016) Williams, Adri
The 2011 humanitarian intervention in Libya: from just intervention to just peace?
(2017) Mokwele, Tshepho Joseph
This research report analyses the 2011 humanitarian intervention in Libya and seeks to establish whether or not it was morally justified and if it led to a better state of peace (a just peace). It analyses the intervention through the prism of just war theory and the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine. Just war theory and the R2P doctrine provide moral guiding principles that must be met to justify the resort to war, its conduct and termination. These principles are outlined in just war theory as jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. The report highlights the origin and evolution of just war theory vis-à-vis to the practice of humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention has long been prohibited by established international law which, nevertheless, provides for the protection of fundamental human rights. Ingrained in international law are the Westphalian principles of state sovereignty and non-interference that have created a tension between the rights of the states and those of individuals. While international law explicitly states that countries have the right to individual or collective self-defence, it implicitly advocates for humanitarian intervention where a state is unable or unwilling to protect its people. The study, therefore, adopts the notion of sovereignty as responsibility as revived by R2P. It holds that every state ultimately derives its rights from those of individuals: the former forfeits its rights when and if it violates those of the latter. In such a case, a state loses its sovereign standing and becomes liable to humanitarian intervention. The decline in interstate conflicts and the rise of intrastate conflicts since the end of the Cold War reignited the debate around the legality and legitimacy of humanitarian intervention because no universally accepted enabling framework has hitherto existed. But in 2001, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) published the R2P report that serves as a generally accepted framework for humanitarian intervention today, following its unanimous endorsement by states at the UN World Summit in 2005. This study, however, that while the ICISS R2P is broad and encompasses the responsibilities to react, prevent, and rebuild, the UN R2P is narrow and lacks the post-war reconstruction element. But this is not new: the jus post bellum element of just war theory has historically received little attention in the literature, which has affected its practice. A similar trend is developing with the R2P and the case of Libya is illustrative of that. The study’s application of just war theory and R2P propositions to the Libyan situation establishes that the intervention was morally justified for it prevented the massacre of Libyans by the Qaddafi regime but did not lead to a better state of peace mainly because it was not followed up with post-intervention reconstruction. Failure to consider post-intervention reconstruction in Libya, however, does no damage to the practice of humanitarian intervention. Rather, it serves as a lesson from which to learn and indicates that jus post bellum is integral to just war theory just as the responsibility to rebuild is to R2P in theory and practice.