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Backpack carriage and musculoskeletal pain among primary school learners in King Williams Town, South Africa

- Moni, Busisiwe

Authors: Moni, Busisiwe
Date: 2022
Subjects: Backache -- Prevention , Pediatric rheumatology , Pain -- Treatment
Language: English
Type: Master's theses , text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/26984 , vital:66208
Description: BACKGROUND: There is rising concern that kids are walking to school with too much weight on their backs. The weight of schoolchildren's backpacks is a persistent and divisive topic in the fields of education and health. Children who carry heavy backpacks are more likely to have back discomfort and musculoskeletal pain, which raises their risk of developing chronic back pain as adults. There is little research on this topic among South African school-age youngsters. The goal of the study was to find out how common low back and other musculoskeletal complaints were among primary school students who used a school bag. RESEARCH AIM: The purpose of the study was to identify the prevalence and location of musculoskeletal discomfort in primary school students in King William's Town, South Africa, and describe their link with backpack use. METHOD: In King Williams Town, Eastern Cape, South Africa, a descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among elementary school students between the ages of 9 and 14 years old. A systematic questionnaire and the Cornell Musculoskeletal Questionnaire were used to gather the data (body chart). Age, gender, and schoolbag details (style of backpack, carrying technique, and carrying time) were collected. The learner's waist, hip, and bag circumferences were all measured. On the data, descriptive and interferential statistics were used. FINDINGS: The study's conclusions showed that students' musculoskeletal pain was brought on by the weight of their backpacks or school bags. The majority of the students (89.8percent) complain about the difficulty they experience when lugging their heavy backpacks to class. In addition, 83.4percent of the students had bags that weighed more than 10percent of their body weight. Additionally, a sizable percentage of students (89.8percent) carry a hefty bag to school every day and report feeling fatigued while doing so (90.8percent). 90percent of the students reported feeling discomfort before, during, or after carrying their schoolbags. This pain is related with carrying a schoolbag. The majority of students (53.5percent) felt that their daily pain interferes with their ability to study. In order of severity, the majority of students report having discomfort in their shoulders (82.7percent), lower back (59.9percent), neck (47.0percent), upper back (40.7percent), and upper arm (16.4percent). CONCLUSION: According to the study, there is a link between students' musculoskeletal pain and carrying hefty backpacks or school bags. The shoulders are where musculoskeletal discomfort is most frequently felt. The study supported the findings of the majority of studies cited in the literature that most schoolchildren suffer from musculoskeletal pain because the weight of their backpacks is excessive compared to their size, weight, and age. RECOMMENDATIONS: The study produced a number of recommendations, including that the Department of Basic Education inform teachers, students, parents, guardians, and other key stakeholders about the effects of heavy backpacks or schoolbags on students' musculoskeletal pain. For students' convenience and to lighten the load on their school bags, locker rooms should be available. Teachers, parents, and guardians should also pay attention to the school bags that students are using to make sure that the weight is appropriate for their age and body size. , Thesis (MPA) -- Faculty of Health Sciences, 2022
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Date Issued: 2022

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Best of both worlds: The thermal physiology of Hydrellia egeriae, a biological control agent for the submerged aquatic weed, Egeria densa in South Africa

- Smith, Rosali, Coetzee, Julie A, Hill, Martin P

Authors: Smith, Rosali , Coetzee, Julie A , Hill, Martin P
Date: 2022
Subjects: To be catalogued
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/417913 , vital:71494 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10526-022-10142-w"
Description: The submerged aquatic weed, Egeria densa Planch. (Hydrocharitaceae) or Brazilian waterweed, is a secondary invader of eutrophic freshwater systems in South Africa, following the successful management of floating aquatic weeds. In 2018, the leaf and stem-mining fly, Hydrellia egeriae Rodrigues-Júnior, Mathis and Hauser (Diptera: Ephydridae), was released against E. densa, the first agent released against a submerged aquatic weed in South Africa. During its life stages, the biological control agent is exposed to two environments, air and water. The thermal physiology of both life stages was investigated to optimize agent establishment through fine-tuned release strategies. The thermal physiological limits of H. egeriae encompassed its host plant’s optimal temperature range of 10 to 35 °C, with lower and upper critical temperatures of 2.6 to 47.0 °C, lower and upper lethal temperatures of − 5.6 and 40.6 °C for adults, and − 6.3 to 41.3 °C for larvae. Results from development time experiments and degree-day accumulation showed that the agent is capable of establishing at all E. densa sites in South Africa, with between 6.9 and 8.3 generations per year. However, cold temperatures (14 °C) prolonged the agent’s development time to three months, allowing it to only develop through one generation in winter. Predictions obtained from laboratory thermal physiology experiments corroborates field data, where the agent has established at all the sites it was released.
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Date Issued: 2022

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Beyond epistemology: the challenge of reconceptualising knowledge in higher education

- Luckett, Kathy, Blackie, Margaret A L

Authors: Luckett, Kathy , Blackie, Margaret A L
Date: 2022
Subjects: To be catalogued
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/426598 , vital:72371 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2022.2111206"
Description: In this Point of Departure, we build on the scholarship of Suellen Shay. Shay explored the nature of higher education, examining assessment and the relation between curriculum and knowledge structures across several disciplines. She drew on the work of Bernstein and in her later work responded to the calls for decolonisation. We first contextualise the work of Basil Bernstein and explain its attraction for scholars of education development in the South African HE context. We then provide a brief summary of recent decolonial scholarship. On this basis, we speculate what a critique and caricature of the Bernsteinian tradition by the decolonial school might look like. In turn we offer a caricatured rebuttal by the Bernsteinian school to the decolonial critique. Finally, we pull our argument together and, by drawing on Bhaskar’s critical realism, assert the importance of an adequate theorisation of ontology.
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Date Issued: 2022

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Can Local Knowledge of Small-Scale Fishers Be Used to Monitor and Assess Changes in Marine Ecosystems in a European Context?

- Piñeiro-Corbeira, Cristina, Barrientos, Sara, Barreiro, Rodolfo, Aswani, Shankar, Pascual-Fernández, José, De la Cruz-Modino, Raquel

Authors: Piñeiro-Corbeira, Cristina , Barrientos, Sara , Barreiro, Rodolfo , Aswani, Shankar , Pascual-Fernández, José , De la Cruz-Modino, Raquel
Date: 2022
Subjects: To be catalogued
Language: English
Type: text , book
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/391331 , vital:68642 , ISBN 978-3-031-01980-7 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01980-7_24
Description: Significance Statement In the last decades, many coastal areas have observed dramatic changes in marine ecosystems, due to anthropogenic and environmental alterations. The general absence of long-term data sets in the marine environment and, more specifically, on benthic and demersal communities represents a severe issue for management and conservation. We propose to incorporate the small-scale fishers’ knowledge and science for better policy recommendations, both in terms of fisheries optimization and resource conservation. Based on two different cases of study with diverse ecosystems, we explore the combination of quantitative and qualitative tools, and participative techniques used to incorporate fishers’ local ecological knowledge. The results highlight fishers’ capacity to identify coastal and marine landscapes resources and changes, reinforcing and complementing the scientific assessment.
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Date Issued: 2022

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Caves, crevices and cooling capacity roost microclimate predicts heat tolerance in bats

- Czenze, Zenon J, Smit, Ben, van Jaarsveld, Barry, Freeman, Marc T, McKechnie, Andrew

Authors: Czenze, Zenon J , Smit, Ben , van Jaarsveld, Barry , Freeman, Marc T , McKechnie, Andrew
Date: 2022
Subjects: To be catalogued
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/441571 , vital:73899 , https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13918
Description: The microsites that animals occupy during the rest phase of their circa-dian activity cycle influence their physiology and behaviour, but relative-ly few studies have examined correlations between interspecific varia-tion in thermal physiology and roost microclimate. Among bats, there is some evidence that species exposed to high roost temperatures (Troost) possess greater heat tolerance and evaporative cooling capacity, but the small number of species for which both thermal physiology and roost microclimate data exist mean that the generality of this pattern remains unclear.
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Date Issued: 2022

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Challenges of implementing management accounting innovations

- Oyewo, Babajide, Hussain, Syed T, Simbi, Chipo

Authors: Oyewo, Babajide , Hussain, Syed T , Simbi, Chipo
Date: 2022
Subjects: To be catalogued
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/426264 , vital:72336 , xlink:href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48717780"
Description: This study investigates the challenges of implementing innovative management accounting techniques, referred to as strategic management accounting (SMA), the interrelationship among the challenges and the impact of the challenges on SMA usage intensity. From the analysis of survey data obtained from listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria, the result supports the conclusion that SMA implementation challenges are interrelated. However, lack of top management support and low awareness/lack of knowledge are contributory to most of the implementation challenges. The challenges discouraging the intensive use of SMA are the perception that SMA implementation is unnecessary as strategy issues are already integrated in other functions within the organization, high implementation cost and problems relating to information flow between departments within the organization. The current study contributes to knowledge in the sense that it is the first (to the researchers’ knowledge) to examine specifically the interrelationship among SMA implementation challenges in the Nigerian context, thereby drawing attention to the need to consider the challenges to embracing management accounting innovations holistically. Knowledge of SMA implementation challenges could help explain the low adoption rate of SMA in developing countries. Such knowledge might be helpful in providing a robust response to the challenges of implementing management accounting innovations.
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Date Issued: 2022

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