Traditional veterinary medicine in the Alice district of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
- Authors: Dold, Anthony P , Cocks, Michelle L
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6513 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005941
- Description: Resource-poor farmers in rural and peri-urban areas have limited access to veterinary care in terms of support services (from state and private veterinarian and animal health technicians), information about the prevention and treatment of livestock diseases, and preventative and therapeutic veterinary medicines. This results in reduced productivity and in livestock disease and deaths, which is a great burden on these farmers, who can least afford the loss of their animals. There is a need to encourage disadvantaged farmers to use available resources and methods, at minimal cost, and to improve their productivity. One of these resources is ethnoveterinary medicine. A list of 53 plants used as veterinary medicines by stock farmers in the Alice district in the Eastern Cape is presented together with their preparation and methods of administration.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
The relationship between subjective well-being and domain satisfactions in South Africa
- Authors: Moller, Valerie , Saris, W E
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7116 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010749 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1010851412273
- Description: This paper examines the relationship between subjective well-being and domain satisfactions. In the past different models have been specified. The most commonly applied model is the bottom-up model in which domain satisfactions affect subjective well-being. The more recent top-down model suggests a reversed relationship. Finally there is the supposition that the correlations between these variables can be spurious due to the effect of personality characteristics. Empirical research has shown that different models are found for different domains and in different countries. Focussing on the effects of the domain satisfactions of finances, housing and social contacts it has been found that subjective well-being is mainly affected by satisfaction with social contacts in Western developed countries and by satisfaction with finances in East European countries. The question we should like to answer in this study is whether a similar pattern obtains for the factors which influence subjective well-being among the different race groups in South Africa. Interestingly, coloured people and Asians did indeed show the expected effects but the groups with the most extreme living conditions did not. Evaluation of life circumstances by black and white South Africans was determined by expectations for the future rather than by current living conditions. This surprising result is discussed in the light of the political situation in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
The myth of authenticity : folktales and nationalism in the 'new South Africa'
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article , text
- Identifier: vital:26378 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/54047 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: Folktales texts are published in glorious, polychromatic, innovative forms that promote the texts as both culturally educational and entertaining.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2001
The evaluation of pharmaceutical pictograms in a low-literate South African population
- Authors: Dowse, Roslind , Ehlers, Martina S
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6362 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006058
- Description: An inability to read and understand written medication instructions may be a major contributory factor to non-compliance in certain patient populations, particularly in countries with a high illiteracy rate such as South Africa. Twenty three pictograms from the USP-DI and a corresponding set of 23 locally developed, culturally sensitive pictograms for conveying medication instructions were evaluated in 46 Xhosa respondents who had attended school for a maximum of 7 years. Respondents were tested for their interpretation of all 46 pictograms at the first interview and again 3 weeks later. The correct meaning of each pictogram was explained at the end of the first interview. Preference for either the Local or USP pictograms was determined. At the follow-up interview, 20 of the Local pictograms complied with the ANSI criterion of ≥85% comprehension, compared with 11 of the USP pictograms. Respondents indicated an overwhelming preference for the Local pictograms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Teenage motherhood and the regulation of mothering in the scientific literature: the South African example
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6256 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007874
- Description: The mainstream literature on teenage pregnancy highlights teenagers' inadequate mothering as an area of disquiet. `Revisionists', such as feminist critics, point out that a confluence of negative social factors is implicated in teenagers' mothering abilities. Whether arguing that teenagers make bad mothers or defending them against this, the literature relies on the `invention of "good" mothering'. In this article I highlight the taken-for-granted assumptions concerning mothering (mothering as an essentialized dyad; mothering as a skill; motherhood as a pathway to adulthood; fathering as the absent trace) appearing in the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa. I indicate how these assumptions are implicated in the regulation of mothering through the positioning of the teenage mother as the pathologized other, the splitting of the public from the private, domestic space of mothering, and the legitimation of the professionalization of mothering. I explore the gendered implications of the representations of mothering in this literature.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Some factors governing the water quality of microtidal estuaries in South Africa
- Authors: Allanson, Brian R
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7096 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012439
- Description: The role of coastal geomorphology and Man-made alterations, including reduced river flow through dam construction, determines, at least in part, the water quality of South African microtidal estuaries. To offer increased understanding of the manner in which these features may modify water quality, a short description of the biogeochemical processes in estuaries is provided. Comment on the present limitations of modelling some of the estuarine processes in South African investigations is given.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Social parasitism by honeybee workers (Apis mellifera capensis Escholtz): host finding and resistance of hybrid host colonies
- Authors: Neumann, Peter , Radloff, Sarah E , Moritz, Robin F A , Hepburn, H Randall , Reece, Sacha L
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: vital:6907 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011860
- Description: We studied possible host finding and resistance mechanisms of host colonies in the context of social parasitism by Cape honeybee (Apis mellifera capensis) workers. Workers often join neighboring colonies by drifting, but long-range drifting (dispersal) to colonies far away from the maternal nests also rarely occurs. We tested the impact of queenstate and taxon of mother and host colonies on drifting and dispersing of workers and on the hosting of these workers in A. m. capensis, A. m. scutellata, and their natural hybrids. Workers were paint-marked according to colony and reintroduced into their queenright or queenless mother colonies. After 10 days, 579 out of 12,034 labeled workers were recaptured in foreign colonies. We found that drifting and dispersing represent different behaviors, which were differently affected by taxon and queenstate of both mother and host colonies. Hybrid workers drifted more often than A. m. capensis and A. m. scutellata. However, A. m. capensis workers dispersed more often than A. m. scutellata and the hybrids combined, and A. m. scutellata workers also dispersed more frequently than the hybrids. Dispersers from queenright A. m. capensis colonies were more often found in queenless host colonies and vice versa, indicating active host searching and/or a queenstate-discriminating guarding mechanism. Our data show that A. m. capensis workers disperse significantly more often than other races of A. mellifera, suggesting that dispersing represents a host finding mechanism. The lack of dispersal in hybrids and different hosting mechanisms of foreign workers by hybrid colonies may also be responsible for the stability of the natural hybrid zone between A. m. capensis and A. m. scutellata.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Sedimentology of the upper Karoo fluvial strata in the Tuli Basin, South Africa
- Authors: Bordy, Emese M , Catuneanu, O
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6731 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007540
- Description: The sedimentary rocks of the Karoo Supergroup in the Tuli Basin (South Africa) may be grouped in four stratigraphic units: the basal, middle and upper units, and the Clarens Formation. This paper presents the findings of the sedimentological investigation of the fluvial terrigenous clastic and chemical deposits of the upper unit. Evidence provided by primary sedimentary structures, palaeontological record, borehole data, palaeo-flow measurements and stratigraphic relations resulted in the palaeo-environmental reconstruction of the upper unit. The dominant facies assemblages are represented by sandstones and finer-grained sediments, which both can be interbedded with subordinate intraformational coarser facies. The facies assemblages of the upper unit are interpreted as deposits of a low-sinuosity, ephemeral stream system with calcretes and silcretes in the dinosaur-inhabited overbank area. During the deposition of the upper unit, the climate was semi-arid with sparse precipitation resulting in high-magnitude, low-frequency devastating flash floods. The current indicators of the palaeo-drainage system suggest flow direction from northwest to southeast, in a dominantly extensional tectonic setting. Based on sedimentologic and biostratigraphic evidence, the upper unit of the Tuli Basin correlates to the Elliot Formation in the main Karoo Basin to the south.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Scales of mussel bed complexity: structure, associated biota and recruitment
- Authors: Lawrie, S M , McQuaid, Christopher D
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: vital:6956 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011996
- Description: Hierarchically scaled surveys were carried out on beds of the brown mussel Perna perna (Linnaeus) on the South coast of South Africa. The object was to assess spatial and temporal variations in the complexity of mussel beds and to investigate relationships between mussel bed complexity and mussel recruitment. Complexity was divided into three components: physical complexity; demographic complexity; associated biota. A series of variables within each component were recorded at two different scales (10 and 50 cm) within nested quadrats on three separate occasions. The nested ANOVA design explicitly incorporated spatial scale as levels of the ANOVA. These scales were: shores (areas 1 km in length separated by 25 km); transects (areas 20 m in length separated by 100s of meters); 50×50-cm quadrats separated by meters and 10×10-cm quadrats separated by cm) This approach was intended to generate hypotheses concerning direct associations between recruitment and complexity versus co-variation due external processes. Three main questions were addressed: (1) At what scale does each variable of complexity exhibit greatest significant variation? (2) At these scales is there similar ranking of variables of complexity and recruitment? (3) Within this/these scales, is there any significant relationship between the variables measured and mussel recruitment? On two occasions (Nov. 97 and Mar. 98) the majority of variables showed greatest significant variation at the transect-scale. On a third occasion (Oct. 97) most variables showed greatest significant variation at the quadrat-scale and the site-scale. On all occasions a markedly high percentage of the variation encountered also occurred at the smallest scale of the study, i.e., the residual scale of the ANOVA analyses. Some similarity in the ranking of variables occurred at the transect scale. Within the transect-scale, there was little indication of any relationship between variables of complexity and recruitment. Relationships were inconsistent either among transects or among sampling occasions. Overall, the results suggest that a high degree of variation in mussel bed complexity consistently occurs at very small scales. High components of variance generally also occur at one or more larger scales; however, these scales vary with season. Mussel recruitment does not appear to be directly affected by complexity of mussel beds. Instead it appears external factors may influence both complexity and recruitment independently. In addition recruitment may influence complexity rather than vice versa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Revisiting nomenclature: 'Early Iron Age', 'First-Millennium Agriculturist', or what?
- Authors: Steele, John
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/11260/934 , vital:30067
- Description: As an art historian who has recently become fascinated by First-Millennium Agriculturist ceramics, I have come across several attempts at dealing with an issue of appropriate nomenclature for desigrrating this era. Conceptual frameworks are articulated using words, yet an apparent discomfort with the term Early Iron Age has seemingly not led to a consistently used altemative. I have been wondering about this and, with respect, offer my thoughts on the matter in a hope that debate will be furthered. Hereunder I utilise aspects of the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastem Cape first millennium ceramic sequence to address some significances associated with such artefacts in interpretations of the past, and then discuss some ways in which ideas of particular social contexts are embedded in language. Thereafter introduction of the term Iron Age into South African archaeology is referred to with reference to past and current usage, and advantages/disadvantages of alternatives are suggested.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Research for health and life: life giving light
- Authors: Burnett, Mary
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: Nyokong, Tebello
- Language: English
- Type: Article , text
- Identifier: vital:7179 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006185 , Nyokong, Tebello
- Description: The elimination of certain cancers with light, known as photodynamic therapy, is a relatively new technique that has mainly been used in Russia, the USA and some parts of Europe, but with remarkable effectiveness. Professor Tebello Nyokong of the Department of Chemistry , at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, is collaborating with Professor David Phillips of the Imperial College, London, as part of the AtlantIC Alliance which also involves Emory University, Atlanta and the Georgia Institute of Technology, both in Atlanta, SA.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Regulation within the supracellular highway - plasmodesma are the key
- Authors: Botha, Christiaan E J , Cross, Robin H M
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6500 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005918
- Description: Plasmodesmal connections are unique, highly dynamic intercellular structures that are lined by the plasmamembrane. They are believed to be a vital intercellular communication channel between living cells, linking numbers of living cells into interconnected, highly specialised cellular domains, thus enabling the plant to act as an integrated organism. Their evolution in the higher plant was inevitable. It is accepted that cell heterogeneity rather than cell divergence pressurised developing plant systems along a route that led to the development of intercellular passages and connections. With time these connections have evolved to allow some degree of regulation and traffic control. This paper explores some of the structure/function relationships in plasmodesmata. Attention is focused on the potential role of the neck region of these remarkable structures and discusses models which may explain the processes involved in regulating the movement of substances from cell to cell.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2001
Re-examining local and market-orientated use of wild species for the conservation of biodiversity
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6655 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007071
- Description: The hypothesis of attaching and realising market values as one means of conserving biodiversity has gained ground over the last decade. This has been challenged recently after examination of a number of case studies, largely from tropical Amazonia, on high value logging, marketing of non-timber forest products, and bioprospecting. The conclusion was that market-orientated conservation has seldom generated the financial returns envisaged, and as such cannot be used as an incentive to prevent land transformation. This paper reviews the basis of the challenge to market-orientated conservation on a number of grounds, drawing on examples largely from southern Africa. It concludes that generalizations from tropical Amazonia regarding the failure of market-orientated conservation are probably premature, and that it should remain an option, amongst a number of options, for conservation of biodiversity. Additionally, the prerequisite criteria identified as necessary to create an enabling framework for the success of market-orientated conservation are insufficient. Case studies are presented where the prerequisites do not apply, yet current extraction for market purposes is sustainable. Other potential prerequisites are also considered. There is a need for multivariate analysis, based on a large sample size drawn from across a range of environments and resources, of which factors are important prerequisites for successful market-orientated conservation, and under which circumstances.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Preliminary observations on the effects of hydrocortisone and sodium methohexital on development of Sarcophaga (Curranea) tibialis Macquart (Diptera: Sarcophagidae), and implications for estimating post mortem interval
- Authors: Musvasva, E , Williams, K A , Muller, W J , Villet, Martin H
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: vital:7075 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009532
- Description: Larvae of Sarcophaga (Curranea) tibialis (S. tibialis) were reared at constant temperature on chicken liver treated with a steroid or a barbiturate at concentrations that would be lethal, half-lethal and twice-lethal doses for humans. Trends to greater mortality at higher drug concentrations were not statistically significant. Larvae exposed to either drug took significantly longer to reach pupation compared to those in the control, while larvae exposed to sodium methohexital passed through pupation significantly faster than those in the control. No systematic relationship was found between drug concentration and development time of larvae or pupae. The total developmental period from hatching to eclosion did not differ between treatments, implying that estimates of post mortem intervals- (PMI) based on the emergence of adult flies will not be affected by the involvement of these drugs in a case. On the other hand, anomalous pupation spans may indicate the presence of barbiturates. These findings are compared with patterns found in another fly fed other contaminants.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Occupation-simulating isokinetic strength of infantrymen in the South African National Defence Force
- Authors: James, Jonathan P
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6748 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009328
- Description: Isokinetic work-simulation packages have not been widely exploited by researchers and this study aimed to assess how effectively occupation-simulating tasks could identify the capabilities of recruits and be applied in the military context. In this study the isokinetic strength responses of military personnel (N=42) were recorded and used to establish benchmark data on a population not previously tested.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Magnitudes and temporal sequencing of load kinematics and kinetics for single-handed pulls
- Authors: MacKinnon, S N
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6747 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009327
- Description: This paper provides data regarding kinematics and kinetics during single-handed, submaximal pulls about various locations in the frontal plane for three loads (6, 12 and 18% lean body mass). Pulls were executed at two relative heights (elbow and eye) through two parasagittal planes also relative to subject morphology. Results indicate that in most cases load and pull location influence the occurrence of measured kinetic variables within a pull cycle but have little effect on the magnitude of these values. Findings from this study suggest that analyses of kinematic and kinetic movement histories may be required for a better understanding of the mechanical loading profiles upon operators engaged in such manual materials handling activities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Life-giving light
- Authors: Burnett, Mary
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7204 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006403
- Description: Professor Tebello Nyokong of the Department of Chemistry, at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, is collaborating with Professor David Phillips of the Imperial College, London, as part of the Atlantic Alliance which also involves Emory University, Atlanta and the Georgia Institute of Technology, both in Atlanta, SA.
- Full Text:
Happiness trends under democracy: where will the new South African set-level come to rest?
- Authors: Moller, Valerie
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7111 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010743 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1011557404822
- Description: Five years after South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, life satisfaction and happiness still reflect societal divides sowed by apartheid social engineering. The paper reports the indicators: life satisfaction, happiness and expectations for the future, from national surveys conducted between 1983 and 1999 for the South African Quality-of-Life Trends Project. Post-election euphoria, which saw all South Africans happy and satisfied with life for a brief moment in 1994, raises the question where the new set-level of subjective well-being will eventually come to rest. In 1999, in spite of some gains in living conditions, the level of life satisfaction of blacks has not risen above the mid-point and happiness is only slightly above the midpoint. Meanwhile, whites, who have forfeited their political dominance, continue to score above the mid-point on happiness and life satisfaction. The paper draws on the literature, particularly on quality-of-life trends in reunified Germany and paradoxical trends in African-American life satisfaction when discussing the dynamics underlying South African subjective well-being. It is argued that coping mechanisms may play an important role in determining levels of subjective well-being in the complex situation of South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Guy Butler: 21 January 1918 - 26 April 2001
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:7053 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007413
- Description: [From Introduction]: For much of the last twenty-five years of his life, Butler’s thought and work were not perceived to be ‘current’ at all. His poetry was hardly read (what’s new there? – neither is anyone else’s); some of it lay in manuscript or obscure little publications until the Collected Poems appeared in 1999. The autobiographies attracted a loyal following amongst a small, educated reading public. His early dramas, though they met with initial success, were stifled by the poetic idiom to which they aspired, and by the racial claustrophobia against which they fought. (Demea, Butler’s South African reworking of the Medea, made it to the boards only in 1990 – the multi-racial cast, let alone the themes, kept it in hibernation until then.) The deluge of journalism and polemic suffered the usual fate of ephemera. Until resurrected by Stephen Watson in 1990, the essays and lectures remained buried in periodicals where they could not be assessed as a totality. His inspiring teaching was a gift to his students, hardly accessible to the wider society; and above all, much of his time was spent as homo commiticus, serving on the boards and sub-committees of numerous university institutions and other organizations, some of which he founded. In his autobiography, he observed wryly of his changed status following accession to the Chair of English at Rhodes in 1951: ‘Professors are not entirely themselves. Their interest as persons decreases because they are now public personages. Much of their time is spent on committees whose function is to pick the brains of individuals without giving them credit.’ Guy Butler gave generously of his brains in such circumstances.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Enhancing military efficiency : a South African perspective
- Authors: Christie, Candice J , Todd, Andrew I
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6749 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009329
- Description: While extensive military research has been conducted in developed countries, very little work has been done on soldiers in industrially developing countries (IDCs). Although many aspects of marching are similar around the globe, the challenges facing soldiers in IDCs, and in particular South Africa, are unique. Since the 1990’s South Africa has seen a considerable shift in the morphological and cultural make-up of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). The result is a mix of soldiers from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Ethnic differences may ultimately impact performance particularly as research has postulated that Blacks and Whites may differ in body composition and body proportions. It is highly probable then that the universal recommendations of optimal marching speeds, load masses and gradients need to be modified to accommodate the diversity of soldiers which currently comprise the SANDF.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001