Editor’s note/Guest editorial

No abstract

A new publishing platform and model for JEMDSA

No Abstract

A new publishing platform and model for South African Family Practice

No Abstract

On the move alobe (OMA): a practical tool for case management of uncaccompanied migrant children in southern Africa

This practitioners’ guidebook and On the Move Alone (OMA) Tool is intended to serve as the official guide for SADC member states in the development of their National Action Plans. These plans are set to be aligned to the new Regional Strategic Plan to Address Mixed and Irregular Migration, which was accepted by all member states at the Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA) 2016. The guidelines set forth in this document aim to complement the agreed standard on Case Management (Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, 2012), and to provide a step-by-step, concrete and localised guidance to ‘frontline officials’ that are confronted with the support and safe management of unaccompanied children in the Southern African region

Urbanisation as an important driver of nocturnal primate sociality

Urbanisation is an important factor driving species and biodiversity decline. Although habitat alterations can be detrimental for species, studies have shown that many diurnal primates are able to adapt to novel environments. Little is known about the ability of nocturnal primates to survive within the urban environment. To increase our understanding on this topic, we present ad libitum observations on group movement and sociality from urban and rural populations of the African lesser bushbaby (Galago moholi) in South Africa from 2014-2018. 20 Our data show considerable changes in the social dynamics within urban bushbaby populations. In contrast to rural individuals, which spent the majority of their activity period solitarily or in pairs, urban individuals displayed a larger degree of sociality throughout their active period, forming groups of up to 10 individuals. Furthermore, urban individuals spent less time moving around, while increasing social (communication/pair-grooming), foraging and feeding behaviour. Urban individuals fed on a range of different anthropogenic and natural food sources (insects/gum/nectar) compared to their rural counterparts. In summary, urban bushbabies showed a large degree of behavioural plasticity, with changes in social dynamics and structure frequently observed. Such alterations in sociality, along with the ability to utilise different feeding resources, may explain the ability of the species to survive within a highly altered environment

Fostering institutional existentialism in the search for legitimacy

Educational and training institutions functioning in today’s globalized economic landscape find themselves in a situation where they face competition but also interrelatedness and interdependency with other global institutions. This naturally drives these institutions towards the pursuit of legitimacy, which would see its qualifications (and by extension its students) recognized as equal to its/their compeers. Within the field of organizational communication management, a body of literature focuses in on this pursuit of legitimacy, and frames it within an institutional mindset; formally as within institutional theory. Institutional theory, however, when practiced in educational organizations, has the potential to be functionalistic in nature – isolating and manipulating organizational elements to work towards achieving a desired state. In this paper, the institutional mindset of educators and students at the University of South Africa is empirically explored, in order to unpick the functionalistic nature thereof and to suggest alternative ways in which to interpret and implement institutionalism within this context. Herein, the four pillars of institutionalism is conceptually and empirically discussed, offering up considerations as to a more existentialistic approach in their effecting. From this, this paper proposes ways in which institutional existentialism has the potential to balance the perception of globalized legitimacy with contextual validity and authenticity

vital_sqi: A Python package for physiological signal quality control

Electrocardiogram (ECG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG) are commonly used to determine the vital signs of heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation in patient monitoring. In addition to simple observation of those summarized indexes, waveform signals can be analyzed to provide deeper insights into disease pathophysiology and support clinical decisions. Such data, generated from continuous patient monitoring from both conventional bedside and low-cost wearable monitors, are increasingly accessible. However, the recorded waveforms suffer from considerable noise and artifacts and, hence, are not necessarily used prior to certain quality control (QC) measures, especially by those with limited programming experience. Various signal quality indices (SQIs) have been proposed to indicate signal quality. To facilitate and harmonize a wider usage of SQIs in practice, we present a Python package, named vital_sqi, which provides a unified interface to the state-of-the-art SQIs for ECG and PPG signals. The vital_sqi package provides with seven different peak detectors and access to more than 70 SQIs by using different settings. The vital_sqi package is designed with pipelines and graphical user interfaces to enable users of various programming fluency to use the package. Multiple SQI extraction pipelines can take the PPG and ECG waveforms and generate a bespoke SQI table. As these SQI scores represent the signal features, they can be input in any quality classifier. The package provides functions to build simple rule-based decision systems for signal segment quality classification using user-defined SQI thresholds. An experiment with a carefully annotated PPG dataset suggests thresholds for relevant PPG SQIs