A scoping review of mycotoxin contamination of maize and other grains in South Africa

BACKGROUND : Despite global legislative and regulatory efforts to ensure sustainable food safety and security, mycotoxins remain a serious challenge in the supply of staple food commodities like maize and other grains in South Africa. OBJECTIVES : We reviewed mycotoxin contamination of maize, maize-associated food products, together with other cereals to emphasis the need for continuous monitoring and management in South Africa. METHODS : A scoping review was conducted on mycotoxin contamination of maize, maize-related products, and other cereals, as well as associated health implications in South Africa. The review intended to identify relevant articles and reports from 1980 to 2020 based on Arksey and O’Malley guidelines. RESULTS : Of the 103 articles/reports identified for the research questions “that define to what extend the South African population is exposed to mycotoxins, and why”, 31 (30 %) were eligible for this study. The most recurrent mycotoxins were fumonisins (FBs) and aflatoxins (AFs). The levels of FBs and AFs were as high as 140480 and 762 g/kg, respectively. CONCLUSION : The FBs and AFs were the main mycotoxins in maize, other cereals, and related products. Therefore, adopting effective, sustainable, and scalable measures in limiting mycotoxin contamination is critical for the mitigation of food insecurity and the resulted health burden. Training farmers and other stakeholders on good hygiene and farming practices along the food chain is important.This research is largely funded by the National Research Foundation via the Thuthuka Funding Scheme of South Africa.https://brief.land/semj/pages/journal_info.htmlam2022School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH

Development of an automatic news summarizer for isiXhosa language

From practice perspective, given the abundance of digital content nowadays, coming up with a technological solution that summarizes written text without losing its message, coherence and cohesion of ideas is highly essential. The technology saves time for readers as well as gives them a chance to focus on the contents that matter most. This is one of the research areas in natural language processing/ information retrieval, which the dissertation tries to contribute to. It tries to contextualize tools and technologies that are developed for other languages to automatically summarize textual Xhosa news articles. Specifically, the dissertation aims at developing a text summarizer for textual Xhosa news articles based on the extraction methods. In doing so, it examines the literature and understand the techniques and technologies used to analyse contents of a written text, transform and synthesize it, the phonology and morphology of the Xhosa language, and finally, designs, implements and test an extraction-based automatic news article for the Xhosa language. Given comprehension and relevance of the literature review, the research design, the methods and tools and technologies used to design, implement and test the pilot system. Two approaches were used to extract relevant sentences, which are, term frequency and sentence position. The Xhosa summarizer is evaluated using a test set. This study has employed both subjective and objective evaluation methods. The results of both methods are satisfactory. Keywords: Xhosa, Automatic Text Summarization, Term Frequency and Sentence Position

Research Reports: 1983 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

Thirty-five technical reports contain results of investigations in information and electronic systems; materials and processing; systems dynamics; structures and propulsion; and space sciences. Ecology at KSC, satellite de-spin, and the X-ray source monitor were also studied

Hydromechanical characteristics of a single rock joint

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1995.Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-311).by Masahiro Iwano.Ph.D

Choice of market channels by smallholder vegetable farmers in King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa

The study investigates the choice of market channels by smallholder vegetable farmers in King Sabatha Dalindyebo Municipality, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Vegetables as a group of horticultural crops are important for their contribution as an income support to a large proportion of the rural households. However, enhancing vegetable farmers to reach markets and actively engage in the markets is a key challenge influencing vegetable production in South Africa. The perishable nature of vegetables demands effective marketing channels. The main objective of the study was to investigate factors affecting vegetable farmers’ choice of market channels in King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province. The study adopted a multistage stratified sampling method. Multi-stage sampling was done in which the first stage involved selecting respondents from the different wards in the King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality. This was done through stratification by separating vegetable smallholder farmers and homesteads within that area (different villages within the area). This was followed by employing quota sampling through the different households and smallholder farmers within those areas in order to determine households and smallholder farmers that are able to provide the needed information concerning the choice of market channels. By stratified random sampling based on village, project membership and smallholder farmers, a sample of 110 heads of households was chosen for the study in eight different wards of KSD. The sampling for this study was based on a large sampling technique of n ≥ 30 as there is no information regarding the population of the total number of homesteads and smallholder farmers that are under each traditional leader (chief) in these study sites. This sample comprises homesteads and smallholder farmers that took part in vegetable production. A structured questionnaire together with field observations and measurements were adopted for obtaining information from household respondents. Descriptive statistics (percentages, means, frequency tables and figures) and a Multinomial logistic regression model have been used to analyze the data. From the Multinomial logistic regression results, farming experience is positively related to choice of farm gate market channel at 1percent level of significance. The age of vegetable farmers was positively related to the choice of direct to consumer market channel at 5percent significance level. The level of education of the vegetable farmers was positively related to the choice of direct to consumer market channel at 5percent significance level. Moreover, the results also showed that the inputs used are positively related to the choice of farm-gate as well as direct to consumer market channels at 5percent significance level. Similarly, means of transportation used and choice of marketing channel of the vegetable farmers are positively related at 1percent significance level at the direct to consumer choice of market channel. Furthermore, access to extension services indicated a positive relationship to the choice of market channel amongst the smallholder vegetable farmers for the direct to consumer at 5percent level of significance which is insignificant for that of the farm-gate. There is therefore, need for strong extension support in assisting the farmers to diversify their production, provide market information thereby enhancing production and opening up channels for market accessibility. This is seen to enhance rural households’ livelihood outcomes in agricultural production thereby improving the choice of market channels by smallholder vegetable farmers and alleviating poverty and improving food security. More so, the government and research institutes need to organize workshops and extension programs in famer’ training for more efficiency in their vegetable production and marketing

Creencias de los profesores sobre la enseñanza de la lectura y la aritmética y la relación con el rendimiento

El objetivo general del primer estudio fue el de conocer la estructura interna de las creencias en lectura mediante el analisis de componentes principales del cuestionario CEL (cuestionario sobre la enseñanza de la lectura), con este proposito anteriormente procedimos a la eliminacion de items según los analisis de asimetria y kurtosis hasta establecer el cuestionario definitivo. Como objetivos especificos del segundo estudio nos planteamos en primer lugar determinar la implicacion o compromiso de profesorado de primaria en las creencias sobre la lectura y tambien sobre la aritmetica, para lo cual procedimos a la realizacion del analisis de clusters y discriminante. Para abordar esta tematica especifica de la aritmetica partimos del establecimiento de la estructura interna de dichas creencias según el estudio de Martin 1992. En segundo lugar analizamos el posible paralelalismo entre las creencias en matematicas y en lectura. Una vez clasificado al profesorado según distintas orientaciones teoricas, estas son "asociacionistas" y "no asociacionistas" en aritmetica y "centradas en el contenido", "centradas en el contexto" y "mixtas" para la lectura, decidimos conocer en el cuarto estudio cual era su posible relacion con el rendimiento escolar, a partir del analisis de varianza. Con este objetivo previamente en el tercer estudio validamos pruebasde rendimiento en lectura, comprension de textos (narrativo y descriptivo) y en matematicas (prueba de operaciones algoritmicas y problemas verbales matematicos). Para cada una de estas pruebas se realizo un analisis de items, especificando sus niveles de dificultad y fiabilidad, que determino la toma de decisiones sobre la estructura de las pruebas finales. Asi mismo nos planteamos conocer la estructura intera del rendimiento academico a partir de las pruebas correspondientes y mediante sendos analisis de componentes principales los cuales sirvieron de criterios de contraste acerca del rendimiento

Three Scottish critics, an essay in the history of ideas.

Thesis (Ph.D.)—Boston UniversityThe latter part of the eighteenth century is fertile ground for the study of the history of ideas, for it presents the student with the problems of an age of transition which is not so complicated by political, economic, or religious factors as to make general analyses virtually impossible. Scotland affords a particularly good area for this study of the transition from the characteristic thinking of the neo-classical age to that of the romantic, for there we can find a large body of systematic thought produced by a homogeneous society. The members of this society who worked primarily in philosophy, economics, or history are well known, but there were also many men of lesser note but still of considerable ability, whose ideas can tell us much about the kind of thinking that went on at that time. This dissertation investigates and analyzes the thought of three of these representative men: Hugh Blair (1718-1801), Henry Home Lord Kames (1696-1782), and George Campbell (1719-1796). The specific focus is on literary criticism, for which these men are principally noted, and the analyses are concerned primarily with the one major work each man wrote in this field: Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Kames' Elements of Criticism, and Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric. [TRUNCATED