Children, Social Assistance and Food Security

The Child Support Grant (CSG) in South Africa, which is the smallest of all the grants, is currently R460 per month after being increased from R450 in April 2021. This grant needs to cover many basic needs for a child – not least nutrition. However, the reality is that the grant is primarily used to buy food; food that is insufficient in quantity and quality to contribute to adequate nutrition. The grant for each child is paid out to a designated caregiver, who manages the funds on a child’s behalf. Based on the understanding that even though poverty and hunger are economic issues, they are also deeply social and psychological, this study is grounded on twelve case studies in which caregivers of children on CSGs were interviewed in depth about the ways in which the cash transfer is managed by households in terms of food and other basic needs

Child health, infant formula funding and South African health professionals : eliminating conflict of interest

Lake et al. refer to the Allergy Society of South Africa (ALLSA) as an example of a professional body that may be fostering transgressions of regulation R991 (R991) of the Regulations Relating to Foodstuffs for Infants and Young Children. They also infer that the low breastfeeding rate (BFR) in South Africa (SA) is a direct result of aggressive breastmilk substitute (BMS) marketing and transgressions of R991 and call for a total dissociation between BMS suppliers and healthcare professionals.The South African Medical Research Councilhttp://www.samj.org.zaam2021ImmunologyPaediatrics and Child Healt

Searching the Footprint of WIMPZILLAs

We constrain mass, lifetime and contribution of a very slowly decaying Ultra Heavy Dark Matter (UHDM) by simulating the cosmological evolution of its remnants. Most of interactions which participate in energy dissipation are included in the numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation. Cross-sections are calculated either analytically or by using PYTHIA Monte Carlo program. This paper describes in detail our simulation. To show the importance of the distribution of matter in constraining WIMPZILLA characteristics, we consider two extreme cases: a homogeneous universe, and a local halo with uniform distribution. We show that in a homogeneous universe, the decay of UHDM with a mass \sim 10^15 GeV and a lifetime \sim a few times \tau_0 the age of the Universe, can not explain the flux of observed Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs). This shows the importance of nearby sources, notably galactic halo. In a uniform clump with an over-density of \sim 200 extended to 100 kpc or more, the lifetime must be \sim 10 - 100 \tau_0 or the contribution in the DM must be proportionally smaller. We also compare our calculation with observed gamma-rays at E \sim 10^11 eV by EGRET and CASA-MIA limit at E \sim 10^15 eV. They are compatible with a UHDM with relatively short lifetime.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures. New results with better energy resolution close to GZK cutoff. Text slightly modifie

VERITAS: the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System

The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) represents an important step forward in the study of extreme astrophysical processes in the universe. It combines the power of the atmospheric Cherenkov imaging technique using a large optical reflector with the power of stereoscopic observatories using arrays of separated telescopes looking at the same shower. The seven identical telescopes in VERITAS, each of aperture 10 m, will be deployed in a filled hexagonal pattern of side 80 m; each telescope will have a camera consisting of 499 pixels with a field of view of 3.5 deg VERITAS will substantially increase the catalog of very high energy (E > 100GeV) gamma-ray sources and greatly improve measurements of established sources.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figure

Origin and Propagation of Extremely High Energy Cosmic Rays

Cosmic ray particles with energies in excess of 10**(20) eV have been detected. The sources as well as the physical mechanism(s) responsible for endowing cosmic ray particles with such enormous energies are unknown. This report gives a review of the physics and astrophysics associated with the questions of origin and propagation of these Extremely High Energy (EHE) cosmic rays in the Universe. After a brief review of the observed cosmic rays in general and their possible sources and acceleration mechanisms, a detailed discussion is given of possible "top-down" (non-acceleration) scenarios of origin of EHE cosmic rays through decay of sufficiently massive particles originating from processes in the early Universe. The massive particles can come from collapse and/or annihilation of cosmic topological defects (such as monopoles, cosmic strings, etc.) associated with Grand Unified Theories or they could be some long-lived metastable supermassive relic particles that were created in the early Universe and are decaying in the current epoch. The highest energy end of the cosmic ray spectrum can thus be used as a probe of new fundamental physics beyond Standard Model. We discuss the role of existing and proposed cosmic ray, gamma-ray and neutrino experiments in this context. We also discuss how observations with next generation experiments of images and spectra of EHE cosmic ray sources can be used to obtain new information on Galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields and possibly their origin.Comment: 148 latex pages in tight format, 30 postscript-files and two gif-files for fig4.14 and fig4.15 included, uses epsf.sty. Considerably updated version of review to appear in Physics Reports. Links and color ps version of fig4.14 and fig4.15 at http://astro.uchicago.edu/home/web/sigl/physrep.htm

Local variations in exclusive breastfeeding rates in Africa

Large-scale analysis of 49 countries in Africa shows improvements in the prevalence of babies under 6 months of age being fed only breast milk, but there are large disparities in progress across and within countrie