Use and users of municipal commonage around three small towns in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Authors: Davenport, Nicholas A , Shackleton, Charlie M , Gambiza, James
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/181116 , vital:43700 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2010.11.003"
- Description: Municipal commonages surround many small towns throughout South Africa, and are an integral component of the national land reform programme. But little is known about their extent, use or value, and most appear to have limited or no management or investment. This paper reports on a survey of randomly selected households in three small towns in the Eastern Cape to ascertain the extent and purpose of use of municipal commonages. Between 27% and 70% of urban households used commonage depending on site. Key resources used were fuelwood, medicinal plants, and grazing of livestock. Typically, commonage using households were poorer and less educated than other urban residents, although the profile of users is unique for each town. Given the extensive use of commonage resources, and their contribution to the livelihoods of the poor, local municipalities need to develop and implement sound management strategies that account for all users of commonages, rather than the oft encountered focus on livestock owners and production.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Violence, postcolonial fiction, and the limits of sympathy:
- Authors: Marais, Mike
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143993 , vital:38301 , DOI: 10.1353/sdn.2011.0034
- Description: In this article, I consider the implications for fiction of Slavo Zizek’s argument that the violence of individual subjects is informed by ‘symbolic violence’ (1-2), that is, the distortions concomitant on languages’s constitutive, rather than merely referential, relation to the world.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy of gold electrodes modified with CdTe quantum dots and their conjugates with nickel tetraamino phthalocyanine
- Authors: Khene, Samson , Moeno, Sharon , Nyokong, Tebello
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/247187 , vital:51554 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poly.2011.06.002"
- Description: This work reports on the synthesis of conjugates of cadmium telluride quantum dots (CdTe-QDs) caped with thioglycolic acid and peripherally substituted nickel tetraamino phthalocyanine (NiTAPc) complex. The conjugates are characterized using cyclic (CV) and differential pulse (DPV) voltammetries, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy and time correlated single photon counting. CV and DPV show that NiTAPc stabilizes the CdTe QDs against oxidation to metallic products.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Water chemistry and effect of evapotranspiration on chemical sedimentation on the Mkuze River floodplain, South Africa:
- Authors: Humphries, M S , Kindness, A , Ellery, William F N , Hughes, J C
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144376 , vital:38340 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2011.01.013
- Description: The Mkuze Wetland System, forming part of the iSimangaliso World Heritage Site, is South Africa’s largest freshwater wetland area and is known to act as a sink for naturally occurring solutes within the landscape. The chemistry of groundwater and porewater samples, collected from two transects on the Mkuze River floodplain, was investigated to identify processes involved in the control of solute concentrations. Results show that solutes in the groundwater become increasingly concentrated under the influence of evapotranspiration, resulting in the saturation, precipitation, and accumulation of less soluble compounds.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Water-soluble quaternized mercaptopyridine-substituted zinc-phthalocyanines
- Authors: Durmuş, Mahmut , Yaman, Hanif , Göl, Cem , Ahsen, Vefa , Nyokong, Tebello
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/247133 , vital:51549 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dyepig.2011.02.007"
- Description: The synthesis and characterization of the new zinc phthalocyanine derivatives, tetra- (non-peripheral, 5) and octa-(peripheral, 6) substituted with 2-mercaptopyridine and their respective quaternized derivatives (8 and 9) are reported. Photochemical and photophysical properties of the new complexes are compared with those of the previously reported peripherally tetra-substituted complexes 7 and 10. The quaternized compounds exhibit excellent solubility in water, making them potential photosensitizers for use in photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancer. Spectroscopic, aggregation, photophysical and photochemical properties of these complexes are also investigated and compared. Photophysical (fluorescence quantum yields and lifetimes) and photochemical (singlet oxygen and photodegradation quantum yield) properties of these phthalocyanine photosensitizers are very important for the assessment of these complexes as PDT agents. In this study, the effects of the position of the substituents and quaternization of the substituents on the photophysical and photochemical parameters of the zinc phthalocyanines are also reported. This study also showed that the water-soluble quaternized zinc phthalocyanines strongly bind to blood plasma proteins such as bovine serum albumin (BSA).
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- Date Issued: 2011
Well-nourished women in a Solomon Islands society with a biased sex ratio
- Authors: Furusawa, Takuro , Aswani, Shankar
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/422173 , vital:71917
- Description: This study reports on the growth and nutritional status of females in Roviana (population 12 235), Solomon Islands, where there are fewer surviving females than males in all age groups (male/female= 1.10; Solomon Islands Government 2000). Anthropometric measurements were performed for 1243 voluntary participants from seven villages. The results showed that females were better nourished than males; weight-forage z-scores, for instance, were better for females than those for males throughout all age groups, with statistical significance in the following age groups: younger than 5 years, 10–14 years and 15–19 years. The same pattern was also observed for adults. Results suggest that gender inequality might not be caused by social discrimination.
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- Date Issued: 2011
When breast is not best: young women and breast reduction surgery
- Authors: Lamb, Tessa , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141832 , vital:38008 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2011.610978
- Description: Most cosmetic surgery patients in South Africa are younger than 21, and in this focus we examine narrative accounts from young South African women who have chosen to undergo cosmetic breast reduction surgery. Feminist debates on cosmetic surgery have focused on the question of whether to regard women who modify their bodies in this way as active agents engaged in liberatory ‘body projects’, or whether such projects are evidence of their subjection to oppressive stereotypes and beauty norms. The latter perspective is challenged here by the participants’ characterisation of breast reduction surgery as profoundly ‘freeing’. The article deals in particular with the conscious choice of participants to knowingly risk not being able to breastfeed children in future in order to achieve a body type which conforms to their understanding of youthful beauty and sexuality.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Zimbabwe's Land Reform: myths and realities
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144710 , vital:38372 , DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2011.581502
- Description: Zimbabwe’s land reform is the first book on contemporary Zimbabwe that offers an empirically-rich and detailed account of redistributed farms that arose from ‘fasttrack’ land reform 10 years ago. In order to fully appreciate the significance of this book, it is necessary to outline briefly recent intellectual debates on Zimbabwe. Two main positions exist on Zimbabwean politics and society. The first position argues that the radical restructuring of agrarian relations (including undermining white agricultural capital and breaking up large commercial farms into smaller units) is a progressive tendency that has opened up opportunities for black small-scale farmers. Simultaneously, this position often underplays the existence of state restructuring of an authoritarian kind. The second position argues that land redistribution has dramatically undercut agricultural production thereby severely compromising food security for all Zimbabweans. It brings to the fore violent state action in instigating land occupations and in thwarting political opposition to ‘fast-track’.
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- Date Issued: 2011