Book Review: Seasons of Hunger: Fighting Cycles of Quiet Starvation Among the World’s Rural Poor

Title: Seasons of hunger: Fighting cycles of quiet starvation among the world’s rural poorAuthors: Stephen Devereaux, Bapu Vaitla and Samuel Hauenstein SwanPublication Date:2008Publisher: Pluto PressISBN: 978 0 7453 2826 3 (Paperback, 148 pages

Seasons of Hunger: Fighting Cycles of Quiet Starvation Among the World’s Rural Poor

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Self-medication in three Orange Free State communities

A study on self-care among whites, blacks and coloureds also focused on different forms of self-medication, including non-compliance. Large differences were found in the self-medication behaviour of the three groups. Different correlates of non-compliance were explored, but selfmedication was not found to be a substitute for formal medical care.S Afr Med J 1993; 83: 345-34

Speeding up stochastic analysis of bulk water supply systems using a compression heuristic

It is possible to analyse the reliability of municipal storage tanks through stochastic analysis, in which the user demand, fire water demand and pipe failures are simulated using Monte Carlo analysis. While this technique could in principle be used to find the optimal size of a municipal storage tank, in practice the high computational cost of stochastic analyses made this impractical. The purpose of this study was to develop a compression heuristic technique to speed up the stochastic analysis simulations. The compression heuristic uses a pre-run to characterise the failure behaviour of a tank under demand-only conditions, and the stochastic simulations are then only run for periods in which fire demand or pipe failures affect the tank. The compression heuristic method was found to be accurate to within 5% of the full stochastic analysis method. The compression heuristic was also found to be faster than the full stochastic method when more than 27 systems were analysed, and thus allowed genetic algorithm optimisation to be practical by reducing the optimisation simulation time by 75%.Keywords: stochastic analysis; Monte Carlo; optimisation; genetic algorithm; reliabilit

Mechanisms of oedema formation: The minor role of hypoalbuminaemia

Objectives: Seriously ill patients often suffer from disorders of salt and water balance and present with clinical signs of either dehydration or oedema. The relationship of hypoalbuminaemia to oedema is complex and controversial and formed the central issue of this study. Design: Prospective study Setting: Medical wards of New Somerset Secondary Hospital, November 2004. Subjects: 50 patients admitted consecutively to the medical wards at New Somerset Hospital were evaluated. 26 males and 24 females participated. Outcome measures:. An attempt was made to correlate causes of salt and water imbalance with the clinical assessment of volume status, oedema formation, nutritional state and serum albumin levels. Results: Hypoalbuminaemia was not related to oedema in this study. From the 24 patients with serum albumin below 30 g/L, only 6 had oedema. These patients all had other abnormalities which could have resulted in the oedema: notably primary salt retention by failing kidneys, cor pulmonale and malignancy. None of the patients with serum albumin levels below 15 g/L had any signs of oedema. The combined insult of a chronic inflammatory disease and malnutrition had a marked effect on serum albumin levels. Conclusion: Significant hypoalbuminaemia was present in a substantial portion of the patients included in this study, yet oedema was detected infrequently and generally had an easily identifiable cause not related to low albumin levels. Most patients with hypoalbuminaemia presented with normal or positive water balance. This study supports the notion that hypoalbuminaemia is infrequently associated with oedema and plays a minor role in its formation

Advocating for the inclusion of operatic collaborative piano curricula in higher education: Informing curricula through lived experience

The purpose of this article was to examine how the lived experiences of five professional collaborative pianists during the 35th International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, that was held in Cape Town in 2016, could inform the inclusion of new curricula for specialised operatic collaborative piano modules in tertiary institutions. Based on the literature reviewed and themes that emerged from the data, a curriculum could include the following aspects: a knowledge of the rules of lyric diction in foreign languages; excellent sight-reading skills; knowledge of the art of orchestral reduction and repertoire; the ability to transcribe and reduce full opera scores. One personal skill that is not often developed and should also be included is the ability of a pianist to evince empathy when working with singers

Embedding motivation in the self-directedness of first-year teacher students

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