1834 research outputs found
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Influence of environmental variables on the larval stages of anchovy, Engraulis encrasicolus, and sardine, Sardinops sagax, in Algoa Bay, South Africa
No full textWe investigated the environmental drivers of larval abundance of anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus and sardine Sardinops sagax in Algoa Bay, Eastern Cape (South Africa). This study comprised a pre-drought post-drought time period, comparing the responses of the fish larvae to different factors before and after the drought. The current study presents, for the first time, which environmental variables are affecting the anchovy and sardine larvae populations in the region. Easterly wind speed and zooplankton density were the only environmental variables that presented a significant change between the pre- and post-drought periods, increasing after the drought. Generalized additive models (GAMs) were used in order to explore the effects that environmental factors might have in the abundance of anchovy and sardine larvae in Algoa Bay. Specifically, the GAM that best explained the deviance of the anchovy larvae dynamics included the covariates rainfall, easterly wind speed, Chl a concentration, sardine larvae abundance and the interactions SST*Chla and sard*SST. The GAM best explaining sardine larvae abundance included only the easterly wind speed as a covariate. This model showed that there was a positive relationship between the higher values of wind speed and sardine larvae abundance
Underdogs on top : troubling positions for boys and a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
No full textAttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) accounts for one of the largest number of health referrals amongst children. As a mental health diagnosis, it has undergone multiple conceptual revisions over the years, where it is now classed as a neurodevelopmental disorder. ADHD remains a highly controversial subject, sparking debate at the interface of parenting responsibilities, effective schooling practices, predisposing trauma, and the ethics of the medicated child. In the midst of these debates, one of the strongest issues to emerge is the high proportion of boys that are diagnosed with ADHD, as well as the sex and gender divide in symptoms, referral, and treatment choice.
Lack of research involving children, particularly those with disabilities, highlights the limitations of ableist and developmental assumptions. Although there is a growing body of peer-reviewed literature on young people’s experiences of ADHD, these accounts tend toward the descriptive and fail to take account of how young people manage their condition as part of identity-making processes. Given the above, the main objective of the study was to understand how boys who were diagnosed with ADHD understood their illness and managed their condition in a school setting. Educators’ views were also sought to bring an adult perspective to this issue.
The study was guided by feminist post-structural ethnography, located at one public full service school named Riven Primary. Given the in-depth nature of the study, attention was also granted to situated performances of boys across Remedial and Mainstream learning spaces and public or private conversational spaces. Analysis focused on group interactions and private interviews with nine boys aged 9 to 11 years of age, all of whom had previously received a diagnosis of ADHD and medical forms of management. Five of these boys were enrolled in the on-site Remedial Unit, while four boys were based within the Mainstream section of the school. Separate focus group interviews were also held with Remedial and Mainstream educators from the site.
Analysis of the educator and boy accounts reinforce the power and prevalence of the biomedical discourse. Accounts of ADHD stigma was related to observed behaviours and public responses towards diagnosis and medication. Educators’ perceptions of risk and vulnerability associated with ADHD typically intersected with broader social assumptions of childhood, sex, and gender. For this group, three broad storylines emerged (flunk, hunk, or punk), which provide different claims as to the deterministic nature of ADHD and the levels of accountability for the child and the family system.
Medication was a powerful signifier for responsibility and success, among boys and educators alike. It was also symbolic of chronic illness and weakened masculinities. Boys were palpably aware of their ADHD-related social and educational vulnerabilities that rendered them as biologically faulty, underachieving, and unhinged outcasts. However, the label of ADHD or the experience of medication was not taken up by all boys in a one-dimensional manner. Instead, there were tendencies to reinforce, resist and, at times, reframe representations of the unruly ADHD child through resources and strategies that spoke to broader narratives of success, maturity, and heroism. In this regard, the so-called “Underdogs” worked very hard to regain credibility through discourses of shared disadvantage, as well as a passion and determination to succeed through adherence to the ADHD medication.
Boys were also careful not to take up illness positions when it rendered them powerless. Typically, masculine constructs such as sport and future employment were constructed as potentially enabling spaces for ADHD, in efforts to counter responses around illness and dependency on medication.
In general, the study findings resist the notion of ADHD as a singular, universal concept and instead make a cogent argument for the socially situated nature of the diagnosis. The feminist post-structural analytical frame helped to disrupt simplistic constructions of ADHD through making visible the impairments boys experienced at the interface of shifting social identifiers and in different conversational contexts. These situated performances ultimately worked to reframe their disabilities and masculinities in either beneficial or problematic ways.
Engaging in research that involves children with disabilities elevates discourses of risk, stigma, and protection. Working in these contexts makes visible the insecurities that plague research development and clinical practice, while also expanding considerations of what constitutes ethical conduct for adult stakeholders. In closing, recommendations are made for investing in strength-based or resiliency enhancing processes that help boys cope with the stigma associated with ADHD.National Research Foundation (South Africa
The taxonomic status of the South African straptail, Macruronus capensis Davies, 1950 (Pisces, Gadiformes, Macruronidae)
No full textThe first record of the straptail fish, genus Macruronus, from South Africa was based on a single specimen captured off the Atlantic Cape coast and described as a new species, M. capensis Davies 1950. Davies did not examine specimens of the other extant nominal species in the genus, but based his conclusions solely on references to the original descriptions of M. novaezelandiae (Hector 1870) and M. magellanicus Lönnberg 1907. We show that all of the characters used by Davies (1950) to distinguish M. capensis from its congeners are in fact shared by the other nominal species of this genus. We also present molecular evidence from a Macruronus specimen recently caught off South Africa to support the conclusion that M. capensis is a junior synonym of M. novaezelandiae
Scale and nature of unethical practices in scholarly publishing
No full textCREST was commissioned in March 2015 to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the state of journal and book publishing in South Africa. This commission was issued specifically to investigate how the revision in the funding framework of 2005 had impacted on journal, book and conference proceeding outputs in the country. The final report of this study was submitted to ASSAf in January 2017.
• In April 2017, we received a grant from the DHET to continue this research with a specific focus on the quality of SA’s publications and the aim to develop a set of indicators to assess journal quality.
•Both in the ASSAf and DHET study we have come to realize that issues around quality in scholarly publishing are inextricably linked to issues about ethics
State of Repositories in South Africa & The African Open Science Platform: South Africa-CODATA Project
No full textState of Repositories in South Africa & The African Open Science Platform presented at the South Africa-CODATA Project.National Research Foundation (South Africa
ASSAf and unethical practices: membership and scholarly publishing
No full textAnnual nomination and election of members to ASSAf
Current ASSAf members nominate new members
ASSAf subject panels that screens the nominated members according to set criteria i.e top ten publications
Selected nominated members publications are screened
Back to ASSAf subject panels for final discussion and consideration
Final names to members for voting
What did it imply for ASSAf—additional layer in the workflow of checking the publications with recommendations to ASSAf panel. (Missing articles,
What is the incidence rate? Extremely low– 1.3% over two year perio
Fictional responses from Vonesh et al.
No full textVonesh et al. (2017) in their critique of Dick et al. (2017) erect a straw man with their thought experiment; they look for reasons why comparative functional response (CFR) might fail, when CFR clearly and repeatedly succeeds. We can view CFR as a hypothesis that posits “differences in magnitude, or shape, of invader/native FRs explain and predict invader ecological impact”. We can test this hypothesis with a mini-meta-analysis: in 18 out of 22 study systems, and 39 of 47 individual CFR studies, FRs of known damaging invaders are significantly higher than FRs of native counterparts (Dick et al. in press). These systems consider 1–5 pairwise resource comparisons; large numbers are not needed for CFR to have high explanatory and predictive power (and practical utility in targeted studies). Vonesh et al. (2017) list reasons why CFR studies should fail: differing conversion efficiencies, mortality, interference, body size, density—yet in the face of these (likely) differences, CFR remains highly predictive. We agree that refining CFR is desirable; this is achieved by incorporating relative invader:native abundances, a proxy for numerical responses, which captures differential conversion efficiencies, plus aggregative and reproductive responses (see Dick et al. in press). This improves the predictive capacity of CFR as, for example, relatively low invader per capita effects can be multiplied by relatively high abundances. CFR also provides mechanistic and predictive assessments applicable to emerging and potential invaders, specifically what invasion history and impact indices cannot achieve.
Finally, it is disappointing that Vonesh et al. (2017) ignored the true essence and thrust of Dick et al.’s advocacy, that CFR provides a testable hypothesis that can truly unify invasion ecology across taxonomic/trophic groups and habitats. We thus finish with our own thought experiment: would the FR (with/without comparators) of any invasive species (actual or potential) be unmeasurable or uninformative
Minimum wages in sub-Saharan Africa: A primer
No full textThe fraction of workers currently covered by minimum wages in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is small, but as formality and urbanization increase, wage regulation will become increasingly relevant. In this analysis, we find that higher minimum wage values are associated with higher levels of GDP per capita, in both SSA and non-SSA countries. Using two measures to assess the level at which minimum wages are set, we find that minimum wages in SSA countries are on average lower—relative to average wages—than most other comparable regions of the world. Thus, SSA as a whole reflects no particular bias toward a comparatively more pro–minimum wage policy. Within SSA, however, we observe that low-income countries set relatively higher minimum wages than middle- or upper-income countries. We find significant variation in the detail of minimum wage regimes and schedules in the region, as well as large variations in compliance. Notably, several countries in SSA have relatively complex minimum wage schedules, and on average we find high levels of noncompliance among covered workers. We also summarize the limited research on the employment effects of minimum wages in SSA, which are consistent with global results. By and large, introducing and raising the minimum wage appears to have small negative employment impacts or no statistically significant negative impacts. There are country studies, however, where substantial negative effects on employment are reported—often for specific cohorts. The release of country-level earnings and employment data at regular intervals lies at the heart of a more substantive, country-focused minimum wage research agenda for Africa.National Research Foundation (South Africa
A participant-focused sociological analysis of beedz, a Grahamstown skills training project for woemn
No full textThis research looked at a participant-focused sociological analysis of Beedz, a Grahamstown
skills training project for women. Beedz is run by the River of Life Church and aims to equip
women with the necessary skills to participate in the economy, either as entrepreneurs or as
employees. Using third world feminist theory, this research explored the experiences of women
who have participated in the Beedz programme, what they went through, and whether the
programme benefited them or not. In particular, this research explored how the participants
experienced Beedz as a programme for women without an exclusive focus on traditional feminist
issues. This research was qualitative in nature; with in-depth, semi-structured interviews being
used as a means of data collection. Data was analysed using key themes emerging from the
interviews. The key findings of this research were that it is important to include women in
training projects, as by including them you create spaces and enabling environments for women
to empower themselves. Secondly, although Beedz does not deliberately work from the third
world feminist theory, it could be argued that it fits in this framework as this programme
facilitates skills training through looking at women as a whole, taking into account not only their
gender, but also their class and race. Recommendations were made on how the Beedz
programme may be improved, based on the information gathered from the participants from the
interviews conducted during the research, with the key recommendation being that the organisers
of the programme need to create a space for the participants’ voice to be heard, so that the
programme can be relevant and beneficial to themNational Research Foundatio
