Social media in the healthcare context: Ethical challenges and recommendations

The popularity of social media has grown rapidly and healthcare practitioners and students commonly use sites such as Facebook. The ethical and professional implications and their benefits and hazards must be considered. Concerns include blurring of boundaries between an individual’s public and professional lives, maintaining privacy and confidentiality of patient information, damaging the public image of the profession and inter-professional relationships. The same laws that apply to conduct in the real world also apply in cyberspace. Harmful or derogatory posts may result in a defamation lawsuit. The internet may also provide opportunities for patient education through peerreviewed websites and to build professional networks. Institutions should have policies on the uses of social media. Emerging technology will continue to change the landscape of social media and social networking and the way patients and practitioners use websites will continue to evolve. Practitioners should proactively manage digital identity by reviewing publicly available material and maintaining strict privacy settings about their information

A future perspective on work integrated learning for South African mine surveyors

Abstract: The defining factor of the National Diploma: Mine Surveying qualification is considered to be the experiential learning component of one year. It has long been considered that this compulsory one year exposure to the working environment enables the newly qualified Mine Survey diplomat to be of immediate use within the mining industry with very little site induction required to make the student a fully functional member of a production crew. With the introduction of a new Bachelor degree in Mine Surveying this critical component of the current qualification will no longer form a core component due to a number of legislative and safety concerns. A model that will incorporate most of these requirements is required to replace the current experiential learning model..

Design challenges facing clinical trials of the effectiveness of new HIV prevention technologies

Recent successes of antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in preventing HIV infection have raised questions whether further placebo controlled trials of new HIV-prevention technologies are ethically justifiable. A trial with active agent(s) in the comparator group can be designed either as a superiority or non-inferiority trial. In a non-inferiority trial the hypothesis tested is that the intervention is not inferior to, by a predefined clinically relevant amount, or at least as effective as, the comparator. Non-inferiority trials pose challenges in data interpretation.Firstly it is possible to show equivalence of two non-effective interventions. If the active comparator intervention is ineffective, the new intervention would be shown to be non-inferior to this inactive intervention, while neither intervention is superior to placebo or no intervention. The second challenge is that any effect that dilutes the true efficacy of an intervention in a trial, such as non-adherence, loss to follow-up or protocol violations, makes it easier for the two interventions to be declared equivalent. Non-differential low adherence is unlikely to lead to the conclusion that an inferior intervention is non-inferior. However, differential adherence between study arms, which is more likely in non-blinded trials, is likely to bias the results and lead to incorrect conclusions. Investigators conducting non-inferiority trials will have to pay special attention to supporting, measuring and maintaining high adherence. The goal in future non-inferiority trials should be to maintain similar levels of high adherence in all study arms, but at a minimum to reduce the likelihood of differential adherence across study arms

Die gesinsdinamika van pastoriegesinne in die drie Afrikaanse kerke

The divorce rate among white South Africans is disturbing. There are indications of a growing divorce rate also among families of ministers of religion. Little scientific research seems to be available on the marital and family life of ministers, especially in the RSA. The aim of the research on which this article is based was to determine whether significant differences occur between the marital and family dynamics of ministers' families and the families of parishioners. Thirty clerical couples and some of their children (N=96) and thirty parish couples and some of their children (N=95) were involved in the research. Six measuring instruments were applied in evaluating the families. The results seem to indicate that the clerical couples experience their marital dynamics significantly better than the other married couples on 12 o f the 19 dimensions which were evaluated. With regard to family functioning the ministers’ families performed significantly better than the parish fa milies on six of the 14 dimensions. There are indications, however, that the clerical couples represented their marital and family functioning in a more positive light than was the case in reality. Therefore no really valid interpretations can be made from the results

An evaluation of the efficiency of laser scanning technology in the quantitative analysis of corrosion

Abstract: It is estimated that corrosion causes around R260 Billion of damage to infrastructure and equipment in the South African industry annually. Corrosion evaluation and protection in the marine environment is well established. In the mining industry the field of corrosion evaluation is not as well established as it could be. The evaluation and measurement of corrosion rates and physical deterioration of structures through electrochemical measurement, visual inspection and non‐destructive test method measuring techniques are well established. The use of sonar (ultrasonic) and laser scanning has been investigated. Laser scanning technology has improved exponentially over the past years and terrestrial and hand‐held units are now smaller, more manageable and affordable to the surveyor. Conventional laser scanners are able to measure to an accuracy of millimeters and generate a point cloud of 1million points per second in some cases. Latest developments in laser scanning include multi‐spectral analysis and Red‐Green‐Blue (RGB) intensity values for each point. Point clouds of data can now be imported into a CAD package and compared to design specifications. In the case where “as‐built” specifications differ for the initial design, laser scanning allows the engineer the opportunity to compare and quantify in minute detail the differences between the final structure and the original design..

Rasberry Pi and BeagleBones : evaluating a cost effective GPS system for on‐mine navigation

Abstract: The South African Mine Health and Safety Act (MHSA) requires the mine surveyor to inform the manager of all workings within 100 metres of other workings, abandoned areas and hazardous accumulations of water or gas. The main purpose of this requirement is to ensure that all employees are aware and can take all the necessary precautions against un‐planned breakthroughs, falls of ground and subsidence. In the case where mines are mining through abandoned workings in order to remove remnant pillars and previously unmined reserves, the potential for subsidence and equipment falling into excavated areas become a reality. A single incident where a machine falls into a collapsed working can amount to in excess of R1 million per incident, excluding the risk of loss of life or serious injury. An unplanned collapse of workings in the specific case study can also lead to sufficient air flow into the old underground to cause spontaneous combustion of the remaining pillars. Although systems for navigation of drill rigs exist the cost to deploy a similar unit to all vehicles in the mining area is prohibitive. A low‐cost system that can navigate a vehicle and indicate to the operator what the subsurface features look like in the direct surroundings of the vehicle was developed using off‐the‐shelf technologies. This paper discusses the process of developing a lowcost navigation system towards a real time information management system for a mining operation. Benefits from this system may be applied in underground navigation and guiding rescue services in the search of illegal miners in abandoned mines

The utilisation of a career conversation framework based on Schein’s career anchors model

Orientation: This  study  constituted  and  reported  on  the  outcomes  of  a  structured  career conversation  framework  based  on  Schein’s  eight  career  anchors  in  an  open  distance  and e-learning (ODeL) university in South Africa. Research purpose: The purpose of the research was to report on the utilisation of a structured career conversation framework based on Schein’s career anchors model. Motivation for the study: The rationale for the study was the paucity of studies investigating career anchors in South Africa’s multicultural organisational context. Research design, approach and method: A quantitative approach was adopted in the study. The population consisted of 4200 employees at a university in South Africa. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) as well as a Scheffe post hoc test. Main  findings: The  findings  of  this  study  suggest  that  career  conversation  has  a  dynamic nature (i.e. it changes) over a period of time. Consequently, career development interventions in the workplace need to approach the workforce holistically. Practical/managerial implications: The findings and results will assist managers, practitioners and  career  development  specialists  in  the  practical  implementation  of  the  career  anchor concept. Contribution/value-add: The career conversation framework based on Schein’s career anchors has expanded the existing theory to find the right balance between career conversations and career anchors to keep people motivated to perform optimally in an organisation

Calibration artefacts in radio interferometry. I. Ghost sources in WSRT data

This work investigates a particular class of artefacts, or ghost sources, in radio interferometric images. Earlier observations with (and simulations of) the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) suggested that these were due to calibration with incomplete sky models. A theoretical framework is derived that validates this suggestion, and provides predictions of ghost formation in a two-source scenario. The predictions are found to accurately match the result of simulations, and qualitatively reproduce the ghosts previously seen in observational data. The theory also provides explanations for many previously puzzling features of these artefacts (regular geometry, PSF-like sidelobes, seeming independence on model flux), and shows that the observed phenomenon of flux suppression affecting unmodelled sources is due to the same mechanism. We demonstrate that this ghost formation mechanism is a fundamental feature of calibration, and exhibits a particularly strong and localized signature due to array redundancy. To some extent this mechanism will affect all observations (including those with non-redundant arrays), though in most cases the ghosts remain hidden below the noise or masked by other instrumental artefacts. The implications of such errors on future deep observations are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, submitted to MNRA

Culture, religion and psychosis – a case study from Limpopo Province, South Africa

Scientific Letter - No Abstrac

Weldability studies on 12% and 14% chromium steels

Please read the abstract in the section, 00front, of this documentThesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 1987.Materials Science and Metallurgical EngineeringPhDunrestricte