A Review of Indigenous Food Crops in Africa and the Implications for more Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems

Indigenous and traditional foods crops (ITFCs) have multiple uses within society, and most notably have an important role to play in the attempt to diversify the food in order to enhance food and nutrition security. However, research suggests that the benefits and value of indigenous foods within the South African and the African context have not been fully understood and synthesized. Their potential value to the African food system could be enhanced if their benefits were explored more comprehensively. This synthesis presents a literature review relating to underutilized indigenous crop species and foods in Africa. It organizes the findings into four main contributions, nutritional, environmental, economic, and social-cultural, in line with key themes of a sustainable food system framework. It also goes on to unpack the benefits and challenges associated with ITFCs under these themes. A major obstacle is that people are not valuing indigenous foods and the potential benefit that can be derived from using them is thus neglected. Furthermore, knowledge is being lost from one generation to the next, with potentially dire implications for long-term sustainable food security. The results show the need to recognize and enable indigenous foods as a key resource in ensuring healthy food systems in the African continent

Equilibrium states for potentials with \sup\phi - \inf\phi < \htop(f)

In the context of smooth interval maps, we study an inducing scheme approach to prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for potentials $\phi$ with he `bounded range' condition \sup \phi - \inf \phi < \htop, first used by Hofbauer and Keller. We compare our results to Hofbauer and Keller's use of Perron-Frobenius operators. We demonstrate that this `bounded range' condition on the potential is important even if the potential is H\"older continuous. We also prove analyticity of the pressure in this context.Comment: Added Lemma 6 to deal with the disparity between leading eigenvalues and operator norms. Added extra references and corrected some typo

Complex maps without invariant densities

We consider complex polynomials $f(z) = z^\ell+c_1$ for $\ell \in 2\N$ and $c_1 \in \R$, and find some combinatorial types and values of $\ell$ such that there is no invariant probability measure equivalent to conformal measure on the Julia set. This holds for particular Fibonacci-like and Feigenbaum combinatorial types when $\ell$ sufficiently large and also for a class of `long-branched' maps of any critical order.Comment: Typos corrected, minor changes, principally to Section

The relation between conscientiousness, empowerment and performance.

This study examined the relationship between conscientiousness, empowerment and job performance among information technology professionals. An Employee Empowerment Questionnaire (EEQ), a Conscientiousness Scale and a Social Desirability Scale were administered to 101 information technology customer service engineers. Managers completed a Performance Evaluation Questionnaire (PEQ) for each customer service engineer. The results indicated a significant relationship between conscientiousness and empowerment. A curvilinear relationship was found between empowerment and performance. The practical and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed

Serving data from the SCAR Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) using the SeaDataNet infrastructure

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) jointly intend to build a Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). This paper addresses the required data flow infrastructure. SOOS will use a system of systems approach, using existing observation programmes and projects. Data should be submitted to professional data centres. The problem arises how to link all these data centres and get a central overview of the SOOS data as well as direct access to the data. The Netherlands National Oceanographic Data Committee (NL-NODC) has successfully built a national distributed oceanographic data acccess infrastructure, adopting and implementing technology developed by the European SeaDataNet project. The Dutch system has been operational since early 2009. The conclusion is that the SeaDataNet technology can be used to build an operational, distributed data delivery infrastructure, featuring all elements required by the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS)

Cross-cultural differences in the character strength of citizenship in South Africa

Abstract: The psychological conceptualisation of the character strength of citizenship as a trait ubiquitous across cultures is examined within the context of a diverse South African sample. The theoretically supposed elements common to the definition of citizenship as a dispositional trait (rather than a situational or cultural phenomenon) are examined by means of considering Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) conceptualisation of citizenship as espoused in their work on character strength and virtues. Using the Rasch model of item response theory the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) Value in Action Inventory (VIA) Citizenship scale was examined for fit and differential item functioning (DIF). A diverse sample of 902 South African university students who completed the Citizenship scale was examined for DIF as a function of self-asserted ethnicities and home language groups, which serve as indicators of culture within the South African context. The findings of the study suggest that while certain conceptual aspects of trait-based citizenship as espoused by Peterson and Seligman (2004) are common across the heterogeneous cultures (as defined by ethnicity and language group) examined, there is sound evidence that there are also qualitative distinctions that are exclusively a function of cultural grouping, suggesting difficulties with the exclusive conceptualisation of citizenship as an individual trait. The implications of these findings speak to the importance of considering citizenship as a nuanced and complex notion that requires further consideration in terms of the philosophical, theoretical and empirical qualification of its conceptualisation